Falling Away With You
by marrymemilo
Summary: Literati, post LMHYBRO. What if Rory walked out on Logan the same time Jess realized he had to have her? Don’t accuse me of having it easy when it comes to you. I drove so many more miles and did so much less because of you.
1. My Favorite Mistake

**A/N—Sorry, I know I've been disloyal. I should be updating _And I Kind of Like You Driving Me Crazy_ like a madwoman, but this idea popped into my head and won't leave. Every chapter is based off of a song whose title is, ironically enough, the chapter title. It takes place shortly after 'Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out'. Rory is living with Logan. That's all you get for now. Enjoy!**

Story Title: Falling Away With You

Chapter Title: My Favorite Mistake

Summary: Even though he pervaded her dreams like the smell of expensive coffee and Sunday mornings. On the covers of all of her books, the smells from the doorways of everywhere she went. He was like her omnipresent reminder of how poorly she had progressed. Literati.

_I woke up and called this morning_

_The tone of your voice was a warning_

_That you don't care for me anymore._

Rory rolled over the 750 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and effectively rolled her mind out of the most fabulous dream.

But she wouldn't say what it was out loud. Not even to Lane.

Especially not to Lorelai or Paris.

Least of all Logan.

She saw the cold space where his body had never been in the unwrinkled half of the duvet cover. When the focus in her eyes adjusted, she also noted that it was 5:30 AM, and the sun was streaming through the naked window.

_I made up the bed we sleep in_

_I looked at the clock when you creep in_

_6 AM and I'm alone._

She ran a hand over the duvet cover she had just noted. She had bought it weeks ago. It was the most delicate light blue color. She had spent weeks looking for it, dragging around her beloved Birkin Bag and flicking her bangs out of her face.

That was the other thing. This pinched, small, Emily Gilmore face that she had gotten. Even when she moved in with them that hadn't been happening.

It was him. He decimated her distinctiveness. He turned her into some DAR, tea serving, 'Oh that's fine Mrs. Huntzberger, you can walk all over me' kind of girl that she hated with every fiber she contained.

Rory didn't even have the slightest comprehension what a duvet cover had been. She hated when people would talk about their new, $400, cloud soft duvet cover. Then she thought, on some inundation of abject insanity, that she simply had to have one in a delicate light blue color. The impulse was unavoidable and total. Now as she looked at it, with the sleep still in her head and high on her dreams, she thought it was foolish.

'If he doesn't wander in here and stumble around the room before crashing on top of the bed with his shoes still on by 6, I'll call and ask him where he's been all fucking night,' she thought as she pulled aside the blankets and scratched her ankle distractedly.

He had been there. He carried a book bag, which made her laugh cynically. He hadn't carried a book in his life up to that point that had anything to do with academics. There it was though.

Then she went and let Logan chase him away, cursing her for turning into the thing she and he both knew she hated. She hated him for bringing that into reality for her. She wanted to run away from it, hide under her covers and wait for the insanity to pass.

Then he had remembered her birthday and she swooned all over again.

Then there was Logan, who she couldn't seem to shake off, even when he did stray.

_Did you know when you go it's the perfect ending_

_To the bad day, I was just beginning?_

_When you go all I know is_

_You're my favorite mistake_

She heard the door click open and Logan wandered in, bedraggled and smelling of expensive liquor, cheap perfume, and cigar smoke.

It was like being Emily Gilmore from time to time. Except she doubted her grandfather wandered in at the crack of dawn smelling like had been gallivanting around his town of choice with Colin and Finn. She didn't think so anyway, but sometimes life would surprise you.

"Hey Ace," he said sloppily, grinning like a drunken sailor on leave, trying to focus on the state of her face and the hour of the day.

"Where've you been?" she asked solemnly.

"Ah, just out with a few people. No need to worry. How was your night?" he asked as he sat down on the edge of the bed and undid his shoes.

"It ended when the clock hit AM and I went to sleep. Unlike you, my nights have a tendency to end before the sun rises," she spat quietly, staring at the ceiling with her hands folded on her stomach.

"Hey, relax. I was just out with my friends, you were invited, remember?" he said, his head lolling as he undid his shirt and threw it aside.

"What in all of our time together has lead you to believe that I enjoy playing second fiddle to your binge drinking and bad attitude?" she wondered, still refusing to look at him. She was having too fabulous of a time imagining him in the ceiling. He could feel the tension if he couldn't see it really, anyway.

"What's your problem tonight?" he asked, looking at her. She didn't turn still.

"In case you've failed to notice, it's not night, Logan, it's the fucking morning!" she said, throwing aside the covers and shutting herself in the bathroom.

"Rory!" he called after her, but not moving. When she didn't say anything, he fell on top of the duvet cover and passed out.

'_You've got to cut him loose. This isn't right. He shouldn't be so passive. And he shouldn't smell like that Jennifer Lopez perfume. What the hell is that?' _ Rory wondered while she brushed her teeth and washed her face, ready to face the morning just for the sake of putting distance between her and Logan.

'_Blonde, moronic, stupid, cheating, alcoholic,'_ she thought. The cold water on her face didn't refresh her. It made her more livid. Here she was, up and moving around, and he was out cold on _her_ duvet cover.

He was too filthy to lie on that blue. She remembered-it was delicate.

Logan was not delicate. Logan was only delicate when it came to the truth, and he was only delicate about dancing around it.

Then she wanted to scream when his phone rang in the next room. She ran out and picked it up, seeing him not even stir.

_Now you're friends are sorry for me_

_They watch you pretend to adore me_

_But I'm no fool to this game_

"Hello?" she answered, too busy trying to catch it before Logan regained lucidity to read the readout.

"'Ello love," Finn said, drunkenly surprised. "Is Logan there by any chance? And if not, do you mind if I am?" he slurred.

Rory suppressed a smile. Even if she hated Logan, she really did love Finn.

"Sorry, he's currently passed out. What do you want me to tell him?"

"Tell him that I'm sorry if Lovely Amy somehow mistakenly didn't get out of the car when we drove by her building as is now back with me. He had a sweet tooth for her tonight." Rory went silent and stony, her mouth a small line of fury. Belligerent. Furious.

"I'll give him the message," she managed to push out before hanging up the phone and throwing it at his head, with once-in-a-blue-moon precision.

_Now here comes your secret lover_

_She'll be unlike any other_

_Until your guilt goes up in flames_

"Asshole!" she screeched when the impact roused Logan angrily.

"What the fuck was that? Rory!" he yelled groggily, but confusion fluttering past his pupils as she just glared at him.

"I am so stupid," she said, going to the closet and hauling out her suitcase.

"What is your problem? Where do you think you're going?" he asked, now sitting up and holding his head in his hands. "Fuck, I need an aspirin." Rory looked at him with a look, that, had he seen it, came off as nothing but, _dare me?_

She went into the bathroom and retrieved the jumbo-sized bottle, almost gone, and threw it at him again, hitting on the joint of his wrist.

"Okay, you need to explain to me what it is you think you're doing," he said, squinting while he looked at her. He looked nothing short of stupid and with the pale morning light still flowing in, Rory saw it clearly. She stood and looked at him while she was shoving things in her suitcase.

"Know the song Maggie May?" she wondered, hand on hip, tone still threatening. Like if he hadn't been listening to Rod Stewart he'd be in trouble.

"No," he said incredulously.

"'The morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age'," she quoted, then turned around to dump the rest of her clothes into the suitcase and gather the refugees from her purse, her phone charger.

"Excuse me?" he said, realizing there might be a reason to be offended.

"Looking at you right now makes me think more and more that you're an eight year old. And I'm sick of it."

"Ace, listen to me-," he started.

"Who's Amy, huh? Who the fuck is 'Lovely Amy'? Do we need to get your 'sweet tooth for Lovely Amy' checked out? Guess we don't have to, Finn took her home anyway," she asked, all the while increasing in volume, moving faster around the room while she packed for the added effect.

"Woah woah woah," he said, holding his hands up, trying to get her to back down. "Let's just talk about this, Ace," he said quietly.

"Logan? Who exactly is 'Ace'? Last time I checked my name was Lorelai and I go by Rory. Sometimes 'hon', 'Ror' if the situation permits, but never 'Ace'," she almost yelled, punctuating each word by throwing something into her bag.

"I've always called you Ace, Rory," Logan said coldly. "What's going on?"

_Did you know when you go it's the perfect ending_

_To the bad day I've gotten used to spending?_

_When you go all I know is_

_You're my favorite mistake_

_You're my favorite mistake_

"I will not wait around for you to come home until 6 in the morning every single solitary night, Logan. I won't answer your phone to listen to your drunken friends talk about the girl you had been hitting on all night. I refuse to hear one more time about how you cheated on me because you're eight-year-old brain makes all kinds of blatant misconceptions. I won't," she said, standing before the door. The finality was silent. An old, Western, Mexican Standoff.

Logan twitched a finger. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Actually, I'm not," Rory said, proverbially placing her hand on her pistol.

Logan swallowed hard and tried to match her move, but its boldness lost in its actual essence of follow the leader. "Doesn't this seem a little sudden?"

"Not at all," she assured him, removing it from the holster. It was her only way out, to get to the shot before he could. To make him nervous. To intimidate him into a corner and almost literally make him cry for his mommy.

"Last night, yesterday morning. Actually, almost every other day than today you have exhibited none of this hostility. What's the deal? I need some answers." He cracked his neck and reached for his gun, trying to be nonchalant but failing and looking cocky. She laughed at his verbal attempts to trump her hand.

But only in her mental, western land.

A land without duvet covers and Birkin bags.

"You need answers? You have got to be kidding me. You need answers?" Her voice hit an unnatural octave. "I'm the one that lays in bed alone every night, takes your calls when you're passed out drunk-even when the subject matter is less than my business-, and has to hear about most of your exploits second hand because you pull this, 'it's a secret society, I can't say anything' or 'don't worry, I'll call you if anything happens' attitude and I'm supposed to wait at home like good little wifey?" She couldn't believe it had all slipped out like that. She made her move and fumbled slightly, opening the gateway to his catching up.

But she was confident that he didn't know any better than to fail.

"Can we talk about this after I've had a couple hours of sleep? Seriously Rory, I'm not awake enough to deal with this right now." He tripped.

"Tough."

"Rory!" he demanded.

"Bye."

Bang.

_Maybe nothing lasts forever_

_Even when you stay together_

_I don't need forever after_

_It's your laughter_

_Won't let me go so I'm holding on this way_

She closed the door and leaned against it, silent as she could be, hearing him fall back against the bed and make a phone call.

"Finn, it's Logan. What the hell did you say to Rory?" she heard him say, though it was muffled.

"Fuck." She smiled. Like shooting fish in a bucket.

She took out her phone, shuffling through her phone numbers. She had deleted it so long ago. In this hopeless attempt to forget. Even though he pervaded her dreams like the smell of expensive coffee and Sunday mornings. Even though he was everywhere she went. On the covers of all of her books, the smells from the doorways of everywhere she went. He was like her omnipresent reminder of how poorly she had progressed.

It was the way that Logan had blonde hair and blue eyes and was just a little too tall and that he had the friends she hated to love. He was like the negative of him.

She finally found a number that might reach the itch that she had for so long.

_Well did you know?_

_Could you tell_

_You were the only one_

_That I ever loved?_

_When everything's so wrong_

"Luke's."

"Luke, I've got a question. But you can't mention it to my mom."

_Did you see me walking by_

_Did it ever make you cry?_

_You're my favorite mistake_

_You're my favorite mistake_

_You're my favorite mistake._


	2. Blue Eyes

Story Title: Falling Away With You

Chapter Title: Blue Eyes (Riviera, not from the Garden State Soundtrack)

Summary: Literati. "Philly was neutral. In New York, I had a past. In Connecticut, I almost had a future. I needed somewhere that would let me have a present."

Notes: This is fairly quick in coming, so I'm pretty proud. This is a different setting this time, but it all ties in. And it's not mine, have I mentioned that?

_Rory-_

His pencil paused there for a moment while he hit the cigarette again, exhaling the smoke poetically into the lamp's rays that were illuminating his desk. He hit himself in the head with the wooden pencil a few times, trying to let whatever wonderful ideas that had led him to even begin this percolate to the surface.

_Luke called and said you were back at Yale. I knew you'd go back. It was just a matter of time. _

_Hayseed  
Where are you from?  
Out on your own  
Better be safe.  
'Cause I've seen_

_Pigs having fun  
Rolling in mud  
So desperately._

_He also said you made good with Lorelai. Luke may not be free and clear, but you made good with her which is basically what matters._

"God, I feel like a dipshit," Jess said to his roommate.

"You should," Nick drawled from the corner where he was lying on his bed, drunk and unable to rouse himself from his bed. "You let me get like this." Nick giggled and rolled over.

Jess sighed and grinned. "I am so glad you don't know what I'm talking about."

_I really want you to come to this opening, but that's not really what this letter is about. _

_Because when I left you that night, with, oh god, whatshisname, I couldn't stop realizing what an irrational ass I've been._

_But you probably already realized that. _

_The high life_

_Ain't like in the movies._

_Those happy endings?_

_Them are all lies._

_And time spent,_

_Alone and apart,_

_Can wither your heart_

_And drive you crazy._

_I can accept the fact that I've screwed up with you more than once. More than twice. Millions of times in a matter of years. Everyday I said something unforgivable. Because I knew you were there and I knew I had you. _

_Abso-fucking-lutely captivated in my hatefulness. _

_I still can't figure out why you stuck around. I can't help but wonder what led me to act the way I did when you were always there._

_Maybe that was the problem. That you were always there. _

_And yet the reason for this attitude is so unyieldingly not your fault._

_Every second I was away when I went to New York killed me. It was knowing the crimes I had committed against you. It was feeling your pain telepathically. _

_I know why I ran away to California. Finality. I needed certainty for a change that didn't rely on the heat from your kiss or your touch._

_I don't want much out of life_

_But I know before I die_

_I want to see your blue eyes_

_One more time._

He put the pencil down and grabbed the edge of the paper, moving to throw it away.

Nick groaned in the corner and turned around looked at Jess. Friends, they weren't. But that had nothing to do with what they knew about one another.

And it had nothing to do with the rent check.

"You're pathetic," Nick said, trying to shake his head.

"Says the grown man lying drunk in his bed."

"What's so great about her? Do you really want to mess with the things you've got going. Why now?"

Jess stared at the wall blankly.

"Because she was my only temptation. Not a high school sweetheart gone sour, not a poorly executed fuck. She was it."

"Dude," Nick said, looking at him, pitying. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

_I could've spent years up in Luke's apartment on those afternoons when you'd sneak up after school and lie on the faded yellow couch. It was on those kinds of days that it didn't matter so much that I was in Stars Hollow. _

_It didn't occur to me as much. _

_I think I might've loved you for that at first. _

_There was something so after school special about the way you were always in your Chilton uniform. Except on the rare-weekend you weren't off in SephoraLand with your mother. Then you'd walk up the stairs in jeans with your hair down and it would just destroy me. _

_There isn't any motive in this letter. I'm not even sure about sending it. But I need it down on paper. I need confirmation that it actually happened. _

_It looked like  
The search was over  
There was no other  
Then you were gone  
Now I miss  
The fever in your kiss  
And what fell from my lips  
I meant every word_

He stood from the desk and wandered around the room for a minute, trying to comprehend his own stupidity. Did he want to be quite that honest?

He was torn. Absolutely ripped in half. It wasn't as if he was lying. He didn't even exaggerate. And he wasn't yet to the part that would seem fabricated in disbelieving eyes.

But that vacuous cerulean had to have some faith left somewhere. There was no way she was that gone already. Just because he had been absent didn't mean she lost herself entirely.

"She got a name?" Nick wondered, his hands covering his face.

Jess turned to him, hoping to see an expression. Nick went on when he didn't give him one.

"The Temptress. What's her name?"

"Lorelai. Rory," Jess explained, stumbling on the way the name rolled off of his tongue like water off a duck's back. Perfectly. It had been an eternity since that name had been permitted to fall from his lips.

"Both?" Nick wondered, confused enough as it was.

"She went by both. Her new boyfriend calls her something else. Something stupid that I can't quite place." Jess racked his brain for a memory of the blonde SOB he had effectively erased from his conscious self that night when he laid down to sleep in the motel.

"Someone's got a predisposition to disdain," Nick giggled again. Jess looked at him with an incredulous smile.

"You have no idea."

_I thought after I never heard from you when you were in DC that I had lost you forever. I had come within a hair's width of giving up hope. You already know Shane was an instrument. I feel bad now, if that's what you're looking for. Validation that now I've gained some moral fiber. _

_I didn't feel bad then. Not at all. I didn't feel bad for making you look at me like that when you saw us together. I wanted you to know the apathy I felt when you kissed me at that wedding and ran away from me like I was a disease. I wanted you to know the anguish that showed up when two months passed and I heard nothing from you. _

_At the dance marathon, I knew I was close. It was in your face when I walked in. I was getting exactly what I wanted. Your attention, but not quite all of it. I wanted you to see Dean and I. I wanted you to slip on your words._

_Again, if it's any consolation, I do feel bad for breaking you guys up. Kind of. It was going to happen eventually, and had I had the patience, I wouldn't have needed to be quite so ruthless. _

_You also didn't need to stare. It wrecked me and I think you knew it. _

_California didn't save me. And it didn't teach me that I needed you. It taught me all of this and more. That I had a screwed up. And the panic ensued._

_Again, just for the sake of validation and clarifying the past, I really did love you right then. Completely. I loved the way my name would fall from the lips that I took against mine over and over again. I loved the way your hair looked new to me every time I saw you. I was driven to the brink of insanity by the way you moved when you were around me. Haltingly would be the right word I think. With the offhand fear that you might misstep and lose me._

_That wasn't possible._

"Where's she from?" Nick asked, crashing from his buzz. Jess set down the pencil and rubbed his eyes sleepily, exhausted from trying to throw everything onto paper at once.

"Connecticut," he answered.

"When the hell did you live in Connecticut?"

"My last year and half of high school. Before that I lived in New York. After I moved away from Connecticut and away from the Temptress, I lived in Venice Beach, California. Then I moved here. The rest is history," Jess rambled.

"Why all the traveling?"

"Have you ever thought that if you drove far enough away from something, it would start to dissipate?" Jess asked.

"Yeah," Nick agreed, still confused.

"I kind of did that. Except I took buses everywhere. More opportunities to read, less to spend on hotels and gas." Nick sat up slightly in his bed, his head resting on the wall.

"Why Philadelphia? Why not back to New York? Why not back to Connecticut?" he wondered. Jess shook his head, sure.

"Philly was neutral. In New York, I had a past. In Connecticut, I almost had a future. I needed somewhere that would let me have a present."

Nick looked at him with what Jess had been assuming was deep thought when he realized that he had fallen back asleep with his eyes just a flicker open. Jess shook it off and returned to the letter.

_I need to see you again. I need my validation now. It's my turn, Rory. I need proof that I haven't lost you entirely. You were of eternal Sunday mornings. I need to make sure my Sunday Sunlight hasn't turned into fog on Thursday before I can get on with what I'm doing. _

_I hope I send this. And I hope above all hope that you'll really read this. I feel ridiculous, sending this (in the event that I do in fact send it) to your mother's house. Like someone who really cared about you would have your address at school. You're going to have to cut me some slack, I've been a little absent these past few years. _

_That's the last thing, too though, Rory. You've been absent too. It's not just my fault. I was in Stars Hollow. I'd check in with Luke and help him out for a day or two when you would be at Yale. I'd lean against the counter and try to imagine that if I concentrated hard enough and made the coffee strong enough, you'd walk through the door and we'd magically be 17 or 18 again, discussing the complexities of Ayn Rand over the Formica countertop._

_The only visitor who came in, in direct response to my coffee making, was your mother. And no matter how many times she came in, she managed to give me the same distasteful look of surprise when she'd wander in, demanding a cup of the sludge I had been brewing hypnotically. _

_I couldn't possibly blame her. If I had been her, I would've done far worse to me. I heard that she and your dad contemplated it. It's understandable. Even without having met me though, the measure of trust on their part for you was somewhat astounding._

_I keep meaning to talk to Luke about his big mouth. Maybe next time. _

Jess listened to the silence in the room and the buzz hanging over his head as she looked for a real ending.

_Your Dodger._

It couldn't have made more sense to him. It sealed the deal with the perfect symmetry of affection. He couldn't possibly not send it now. No matter how cheesy he had seemed, it was real, and he had rarely been really himself when she was present. She brought out a sort of feeling in him that made him stop being real. And when he said real he really meant normal but he saw them as one in the same. Twin cousins.

He licked the edge of the pre-addressed envelope, careful not to include his name on the return label, and put it on the edge of the desk, under his keys.

"Up and at em' kid, or you're gonna feel like a worldly pile of shit tomorrow," Jess said, rousing Nick.

_I don't want much out of life  
But I know before I die_

_I want to see your blue eyes_

_One more time._


	3. Wonderwall

Story Title: Falling Away With You

Chapter Title: Wonderwall (Oasis of course ))

Summary: She wanted to wallow. Not only in the apathy, but in the realization that she did, in fact, after all of this time and all of these words, love him. Literati

Notes: Thanks so many millions of times for your encouragement! This is back to Rory's POV. Again, quick in coming, and forgive me for AIKOLYDMC, I'm working on it, I promise.

Rory sat in her car, driving blindly towards Stars Hollow, taking the turns robotically, moving along without effort.

Leaving Logan behind fluently.

She wanted to smile, to laugh, to release her emotions from persecution, but something slight wasn't letting her let it go.

_Today is gonna be the day _

_That they're gonna throw it back to you_

_By now you should've somehow_

_Realized what you've got to do_

_I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do_

_About you now._

The curvatures of the road were slick and fleeting, letting the exits along the highway fly by rhythmically. But her movements, her breaths, the way she let her eyes flit were halting and erratic.

She thought of him and the air coming in through the window seemed less apparent, warmer, and insignificant. She thought about hearing his voice for the first time in a month and the radio was silenced when it reached her ears.

For a split second, Rory imagined his hands on her (absolutely anywhere) and she could've sworn she'd let go of the steering wheel. Let God's will take her where it may and forget that the road wasn't steering her. For just a moment she let herself float out of her body.

_Back beat, the word was on the street_

_That the fire in your heart is out_

_I'm sure you've heard it all before_

_But you never really had a doubt_

_I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do_

_About you now._

When the blaring sound of reality pierced her conscious again, though, she found herself realizing that the last hand to touch her was Logan's. A few nights before he greedily took her body, and then he thoughtlessly slept beside her while her mind traveled elsewhere, the tears not yet capturing her eyes.

She wasn't sure that she slept, and everything prior to that, and after that until now was as vague as a blur in slow motion. A shapeless, colorless haziness.

Absently she thought to a higher power, offering her past as a supplication for an improvement in the future. _'Take it,'_ she thought, _'it's been useless thus far.'_

He was creeping in on her every whim, taking away her routine and replacing it with the things she loved most; him, Saturday afternoons in the apartment over the diner, and the achingly brown eyes she found herself staring into and at every time she could.

The trip felt so much longer than the lovingly accurate 22.8 miles he had researched so long ago. It felt like a time warp gone haywire. That was the thing—Stars Hollow hadn't moved on that much (with the exception of the engagement of Lorelai and Luke), but her life, her routine innocence had been altered so shockingly and so quickly that she seemed to have stepped into an alternate universe.

The problem being, she was once from this alternate universe.

_And all the roads we have to walk are winding_

_And all the lights that lead us there are blinding_

_There are many things that I_

_Would like to say to you but I don't know how._

It was a weepy kind of drive she was having, the kind where you wish there were windshield wipers for your tears streaming down your face and glossing over your eyes. It was the kind of drive you were glad you took in the afternoon so the darkness of the night didn't continue to interfere.

She thanked whatever God she had left that the traffic was minimal and that no one else had heavy hearts. She didn't want someone to be able to relate to her. For a change, she wanted to be unique with her pain. No one would be emphatic in their sympathy this time. Maybe she wouldn't even insist on the pain. Perhaps she'd conceal it for a little while, keep it to herself.

The last thing she wanted were the "oh I know babe"-s and the "I've been there before"-s.

She wanted to wallow. Not only in the apathy, but in the realization that she did, in fact, after all of this time and all of these words, love him.

Rory could've trusted him and she was kicking herself repeatedly for not knowing it sooner.

_Because maybe _

_You're gonna be the one that saves me?_

_And after all_

_You're my wonderwall._

The exit was a calling. It beckoned her to veer right and decelerate into the left turn lane at the blinking stop signal, where the sign told her to go home or venture into the unknown.

At the light, she saw a waning half moon hovering over the treetops, staring blankly for a split second. It was then that she decided to stop trying to make him telepathically stare at it with her. It was then that she made the bold decision in trying to simply concentrate on the pavement; the proverbial road ahead.

Maybe she could rely on the future and let go. She didn't want the street corner reliance of religion anymore. And wanted something wholly unholy. And something short of the single malt, slow gin, oak barrel-aged existence she had led so recently. She wanted a life whose only neutrality was the darkness when they would lie together. She wanted something powerfully and colorfully passionate.

It was quick in coming and she had to all-too quickly wipe away her tears. She didn't want anyone to know yet, she had decided when the town seemed to take her into its arms. That past half hour had been the most treacherous trip she had taken since the bus ride to New York when she was in high school. That was the single-worst span of time behind the wheel she would have to date.

She parked. She got out. She walked into her house and wanted to crumple against the wall when something so simple as the smell of those times made her entirely weak.

"You're home early," Lorelai commented when she walked out of the kitchen and spotted Rory with her face still stained with tears and a suitcase in her hand. But she looked like she might smile so she wouldn't push.

"I wanted to come home last night but I had to wait for Logan to get back," she said, by way of explanation. "Coffee?"

"Kitchen. What time did he get back, you don't look exactly refreshed," Lorelai said, following her in, sniffing the trail for clues.

"Six."

"This _morning_?" she asked incredulously. Rory nodded while she poured coffee into the cup and then moved her suitcase against her bedroom door.

"Typical," Rory acquiesced.

"Wow. Were you up all night?" she inquired.

"Not quite." Lorelai stood in Rory's aging silence and tried to gain from it some kind of assurance that her life was normal.

"What's he doing while you're here?"

"Someone named Amy."

xxx

Rory walked into Luke's thirty minutes later with purpose, with poise. She kept detached while she entered, trying hard not to let the ringing of the bell that signaled her entrance drag her back in time. It was an uphill battle that she fought every time she came and went.

Bell or no bell.

"Hi," Luke said awkwardly upon walking out of the kitchen and sighting her. Rory smiled, hitching her purse on her shoulder with the frustrating foreshadowing that she was all business.

"Hey," she said, trying hard to forget the look on his face the day he found them on their way to their first (actually second) kiss in the apartment over the diner. It was a similar face today. A little suspicious, mostly shocked, somewhat amused. Entirely uncomfortable.

"Did you get it?" she asked, trying to seem curious, an attempt to ease her anxiousness.

"Yeah," he said, setting the order he was carrying at a table and going behind the counter, reaching into his pocket, and pulling out the slip of paper. "It's the most recent. I'm pretty sure he stopped changing numbers."

"Thanks," she said, taking the paper from his hand. She looked at him, accomplished and sure though her insides were twisting.

"I haven't talked to him yet. You might want to wait until I have. He told me about going to your grandparents. I'm sorry, he's a headcase," Luke tried to apologize.

"Can't be any less sane than me. He's good with reality checks, but I think he's always known that," she said, grateful but not willing. They stood in a pregnant personal silence for a minute, the diner buzzing quietly.

"You're home kind of early," Luke pointed out. Rory smiled sadly.

"Yeah, my day kind of opened up." She swallowed hard and fingered the paper in her hands. She imagined that it felt like the pages of his book.

She thought fleetingly that it felt like the skin on the small of his back.

But that was impossible. She could hardly conjure up the idea.

"Coffee?" Luke asked, trying out his shield for the awkwardness that he had a tendency to acquire when in her presence. Regardless of the stepfather factor and the years that she thought of him as her father, a situation involving _him_ had always brought out the tension.

"You know me," she said, sitting at a stool, moving her hair out of her face and glancing at the curtain. It had been replaced recently. A sad feeling fell like snow into her stomach and iced over her eyes.

All she wanted to do was imagine briefly that she was 17 and he was just lurking behind that curtain, up those stairs, behind that door, watching I Dream of Jeannie.

But she was 21 and he was 21 and according to him and proof being the slip of paper she had recently peeked at that was in her hand, he was in Philadelphia and she was in New Haven.

Well, she used to be. She wasn't so sure about New Haven anymore. Maybe it was time for relocation.

"You want that to-go?" Luke asked for the third time while Rory stared off into space vacantly. Her eyes shot over to him, trying to make up for her absence.

"Sure," she said, nodding, positive. "Hey Luke?" she asked again. He turned and made a small, acknowledging noise. "What time does the mail come at my mom's house usually?" She couldn't believe what she was trying to do.

"Usually around 1, why?" he asked. Rory shook her head offhandedly.

"I'm waiting on a package that I had sent through the mail and I just wanted to know," she lied. _ How brazen it is to lie to the man who's done nothing but sneak around to enable you to break all your little rules for yourself,_ she thought.

"Oh. Well, here it is. Happy waiting," he said, trying so hard not to stumble on his words but failing.

_Today was gonna be the day _

_But they'll never throw it back to you_

_By now you should've somehow_

_Realized what you're not to do_

_I don't believe that anybody_

_Feels the way I do_

_About you now._

It had only just then dawned on her why she couldn't tell Lorelai or Luke or Lane or Paris what she was really up to. Because they all knew that she had to know better.

The thing that they actually didn't know, though, was that she couldn't possibly know any better. Not when she was like this. And not when he smelled like that and his mouth was so perfect because it was so different.

She walked toward the mailbox, depressed to find that it wasn't empty and that she'd have to wait another day. She was too embarrassed to go to the post office and look the clerk in the eye while she handed them a letter addressed to him. With that look in her eyes and all that time gone by.

Rory brought the mail in and set it on the table, entering her room and opening her computer, trying to avoid her email client.

She knew that there would be something from Logan in there. God forbid he should call her or show up to apologize. He probably didn't even open the computer to send it to her. He probably had sent it from his Blackberry.

A cold, hard determination was set with her. Whether or not she intended to make him happy, notwithstanding. But she was going to at least find him, at least acknowledge his presence on her mind.

The way that she had dreamt every night for an entire month that his hands were on her body and she was letting him, returning with equal fervor his kiss and his touch. The way that every time she found herself in the make-believe throes she truly believed that he was there, holding her perfectly.

It didn't matter if she had just been touched by Logan or if he hadn't yet stumbled into bed. The dream never changed.

She woke up electrified and terrified every morning. She would wake up happy.

She would stay awake sad.

_And all the roads that lead you there were winding_

_And all the lights that light the way are blinding_

_There are many things that I would like to say to you_

_But I don't know how._

"Rory?" Lorelai called from the kitchen. She padded out of the room and looked at her mother questioningly.

"You have mail," she said, holding out an envelope, but not close enough to retrieve.

"Here?" she inquired. Lorelai let out a sigh and handed it over reluctantly. Then she nodded.

"From Jess."

_I said maybe_

_You're gonna be the one that saves me_

_And after all_

_You're my wonderwall._


	4. Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Story Title: Falling Away With You

Chapter Title: Sitting, Waiting, Wishing (Jack Johnson)

Summary: Literati. Jess wasn't the one that argued over books with her and agonized over the curves of her hips and her shoulders. Agonizing was the only thing he could do that morning.

Notes: The feedback from all of you was SO overwhelming. Thanks to all of you. Special thanks go out to Nikki (someone5) and pamhalliwell. You guys gave me exceptional feedback and I cannot thank you enough except to dedicate this chapter to the two of you! This is back to Jess's POV. I know this is kind of a sad story, but it won't stay that way! You know me, I like to write happy things! But this idea is just freakin' not leaving my mind, so I had to get it out there.

_Well I was sitting, waiting, wishing_

_You believed in superstitions_

_Then maybe you'd see the signs._

Jess almost didn't answer his phone that morning. The high he had after the dream he'd had was just too exquisite to leave behind. The rattling of the vibrate mode though, could do nothing more and nothing less than drag him out of it, kicking and screaming.

"Yeah?" he asked, somewhat annoyed. He'd been laying in bed for ten minutes trying to dwell painlessly on the dream. To revel in the feelings and not the girl.

"You're pleasant," Luke said. Jess rolled his eyes and sat up in bed.

"What?" The image was chased away. A blur of long, brown hair, smallish shoulders, and beautiful hips.

"There you go again."

"Get to the point," Jess demanded, their playful repertoire becoming a nuisance on the fact that he'd like nothing better than to lay there and pretend that things were as they were while he slept on his Spartan cotton sheets, a wall away from some kind of world.

"Rory's in town for the weekend," Luke stated. Jess's stomach dropped to the floor suddenly and he cast his eyes down as if he had to hide from the fact. Here she came again. Maybe it wasn't her though. Maybe it was just his imagination running away with the idea that perhaps, after all this time, she might be looking for a link to him.

"Huh," he said neutrally. His veneer didn't fade.

"She came in here today." Jess inhaled slowly and tried to summon up a picture of her in his head that he couldn't stand. There wasn't one. Not one where she was alone. Even with partner she just looked all the more desirable. A complete and total challenge. Something he knew he had to have because they should have one another.

Then had that little fleeting memory of her running out of his head. That would have to do for now, and probably for a while.

"What part of all of this is supposed to shock me?"

"Keep your shirt on, I'm getting there," Luke demanded.

"Must be a slow morning if you can afford to talk to me like a four-year-old," Jess said, swinging his legs out of his bed and hanging his head, his hand cold on the back of his neck. Sobering it was so cold.

But she was so warm. Oh god, she was warm. Rory was so warm he thought that maybe he'd kill her if he came too close.

That was only half of the time though. The other half of the time, he thought that if he got to touch her just one more time, they'd both realize the feeling. The feeling of hot on cold and hard on soft and the pads of his fingertips gliding down her pale arm.

He felt the familiar rush of warm.

He thought it was her.

Luke ignored him. "She came and got your phone number and address from me." Jess finally sat up and opened his eyes. His mind was reeling and his fear was paralyzing. His worst fears and most ludicrous dreams coming true.

"What else did she say?" he said urgently, a little too quickly. Almost ecstatic but too afraid to smile. He wanted to smile, but his heart was beating too fast and he was just so afraid of her.

"Nothing really. She got a coffee to go and went to wait for a package at Lorelai's. Why? What did you do?" Luke said, his suspicion growing in direct proportion to the number of words Jess said.

"I didn't _do_ anything. I was just wondering what her sudden interest in contacting me was after a month of complete silence was," Jess concluded.

"You do anything to screw around with what she's got going on, and family or not, I'll beat the crap out of you," Luke threatened halfheartedly. "She seemed off enough without any other new stuff."

"She seemed off?" Jess asked, his heart now racing faster, balanced with his nervous nicotine twitch.

She probably didn't know he had picked it back up.

Her presence on his brain had turned it into a pack-a-day habit with an annoying but rightfully accompanying caffeine addiction.

It was just a step closer to her and he kind of liked that it was.

"Yeah. Not sure why, I haven't talked to Lorelai yet. What do you care anyway? I thought that you had nothing to do with one another anymore, outside of that little incident last month."

"We haven't. That's why I want to know." He stood lit a cigarette from the pack on his bedside table, exhaling in a cloud.

"Well, you know all that I do. If something important happens, you'll probably hear from me," Luke said. Jess nodded as if Luke could see him, not rational because the high the cigarette was giving him was making him unitask his mind.

It was a little blinking fluorescent sign.

Rory.

Rory.

Rory.

It was red and flickered a little sometimes, the uncertainty clear in his mental imagery. He read her second-hand observed actions just like a book.

He had a knack for the pictures in his head.

"Ok. I'll talk to you later," Jess said, waiting for the goodbye and hanging up his cell phone, throwing it onto the unmade and still warm bed.

But it wasn't that warm. Not as warm as the back of her neck and her pink lips.

The rough cotton sheets he imagined would burn her skin. It was delicate. Beyond delicate.

And maybe just a little too cold.

Rory was of the finest, thinnest porcelain.

He was getting ahead of himself. So far ahead of himself he almost forgot that he didn't hold her when she was scared. He didn't kiss her head when she left for class or work.

Did she even have a job? He wasn't exactly sure.

Jess wasn't the one that argued over books with her and agonized over the curves of her hips and her shoulders.

Absently he wondered if whatshisname read. Doubting it, Jess stubbed the cigarette and sat on his bed, leaning against the wall behind him.

He had never been the one that showed her a life she didn't know. He accommodated. Jess let her live in her comfort zone and yet had to wonder why she wasn't ready to lay down on someone else's bed and give it up to him. He had been so naïve.

It wasn't that he needed to take baby steps. It was that he needed to stop taking flying leaps.

But maybe then again, he did. If he were to try to take baby steps from Philly to New Haven, it would be an eternity.

_The Lord knows that this world is cruel_

_I ain't the Lord, no I'm just a fool_

_Learning lovin' somebody don't make them love you_

He groaned and banged his head against the wall once, getting a receiving pound from the neighbor. Jess sighed and shut his eyes.

What would she possibly think about that moronic letter? Verbally, Jess would never have said a word of it. He would have unendingly teased those who did. But on paper? It made enough sense. And as he'd thought before, it wasn't like he'd lied.

How was she going to know that? How after years of silence and screams could she know what he thought and what was true and what was a ruse?

Agonizing was the only thing he could do that morning.

Over the bookstore.

Her.

That stupid letter.

That asshole. His name was Logan he remembered suddenly.

Sneaking up on her at her grandparent's house.

Never in all of his life had he more strongly wanted to maul her. Take her in his arms and shake her until she fell back into time and into Rory Gilmore and then proceed to love her until she thought she might be sick.

But instead he reintroduced politely and later chided her for her irrationality.

_Must I always be waiting, waiting on you?_

_Must I always be playing, playing your fool?_

He had half a mind to go. To just get into his Honda and go to wherever she was. It was all he wanted to do.

He went to reach for his suitcase and froze, his whole body stiffening.

What if she really didn't want to see him?

What if he found her with Logan? It was no matter if they were sitting silently, eating, or having sex on the living room floor. Jess couldn't survive seeing them together again. He knew it when he saw them together at that bar and he wanted to take a flying leap.

Like his life's work had been shot to hell.

He'd never even wanted to eat one of his failed attempts at a book. Maybe it didn't make him a true starving artist or a real author.

So what did losing his lover make him? A failed emotionalist?

Or did it just turn him into a normal emotionalist?

Was that even a possibility?

Not just emotions, but being an average emotionalist. He wanted to scream.

He let his hand drop to his side while he thought this all through, trying to forget the suitcase and the car. He couldn't leave. Not until he was sure that he hadn't failed. He needed that little bit of substantiation.

He could admit that he'd failed. He would give in to the fact that he was impulsive. Jess even could say that he'd been stupid.

But lovesick, he would never say out loud.

_I sang your song, I danced your dance_

_I gave your friends all a chance_

_Putting up with them wasn't worth never having you._

_Maybe you've been through this before_

_But it's my first time so please ignore_

_The next few lines 'cause they're directed at you._

Jess opened the only window he had in the room and let in the cool air, looking up and outward at the cool grey sky. He heard his bedroom door open up and Nick poke his head in, a take-out cup of coffee in his hand and a goofy, Nick kind of grin on his face. He wanted to smile at him but couldn't find the emotion.

"Coffee," Nick said.

"Thanks. What do I owe you?" Jess said, reaching for his wallet on the bedside table.

"Nothing. I just went and got it. We're out," Nick explained, handing him the coffee and sipping his own.

"I'll remember that." They stood in silence for a minute, jockeying for the next speaking position, trying hopelessly to find something to say to one another.

Nick was so clear and Jess was so sad and the clash was numbing.

_I can't always be waiting, waiting on you._

_I can't always be playing, playing your fool._

"Have you heard from her yet?" Nick finally asked. Jess looked at him and felt everything but his eyes sink into his socks when he realized that he hadn't.

"Not yet," he decided to answer.

"She probably just got it," Nick said, trying to keep his hopes up. He was almost pale.

"Probably." Jess was achingly morose, trying to find a loophole to his desperation.

Nick nodded, sipping his coffee again and feeling like an idiot. Jess spoke again.

"What if she already read it? What if she is waiting for me to do something? What if my sitting here drinking coffee in sweatpants is doing nothing but killing her, too?" Nick was about to experience a Jess Mariano breakdown and he tried to do damage control by interjecting.

"Hey, don't think like that. What do you know? She's expected you to constantly be the one making moves and now you've put the ball in her court. You gotta roll with the punches or you're gonna get knocked out." Jess wanted to glare.

"I don't feel right sitting, here, waiting for something that may or may not come. I've spent my entire life waiting around for things, wishing they'd happen. I'm done."

He felt himself get built back together, ready to let go of his grief.

Whether or not anyone else was, notwithstanding.

_I keep playing your part_

_But it's not my scene_

_Want this plot to twist_

_I've had enough mystery._

_Keep building it up_

_Then shooting me down_

_But I'm already down._

"Don't you get it?" Nick said, laughing at the idiosyncrasy. "You go, and she's gonna run, like you're afraid she might. You sit here, and you might be taking your chances on her ever coming around, but at least you'll be sure."

Jess shook his head, as he found himself doing a lot. For him, it was a habit of stubbornness. Not negativity. It was being steadfast, something he had never been before.

"What if there really isn't a way to be sure? What if either way there's a very real possibility I'll get fucked over?"

Nick looked at him blankly and shook his head at the floor. "I can't tell you what to do, and my advice probably means shit to you."

Jess scoffed bitterly. "You're not quite at the bottom of the list."

_Just wait a minute_

_Just sitting, waiting_

_Just wait a minute_

_Just sitting, waiting._

Nick blew out a breath and went to back out the room.

He laughed bitterly as he tasted the coffee as it danced around his tongue and trickled into his throat, settling on the feeling he'd had all morning. The all-consuming cold of guilt.

"This is not a healthy way to start a morning," Jess commented, kicking around a blanket that had fallen onto the floor.

Nick spoke as he closed the door. "Would've been worse if I had bought donuts."

_Well, if I was in your position_

_I'd put down all my ammunition_

_I'd wonder why it'd taken me so long._

_But Lord knows that I'm not you_

_And if I was, I wouldn't be so cruel_

'_Cause waiting on love ain't so easy to do._

Why had she taken so long? Why had it taken her until a month after a random visit to even start to recognize him on her mind? Why wouldn't she just see it? The only thing Jess had wished for was that she would see through all the bullshit and realize that he was there.

It wasn't a wise decision. And it wasn't the kind of position he would have let himself into otherwise. But when he walked by that closet again on the way to the bathroom, it was overwhelming and predictably inebriating.

Just as inebriating as those little breaths she took between their kisses and her pronunciation of his name. Casual. Never heavy on her tongue. Light. Perfect.

_Must I always be waiting, waiting on you?_

_Must I always be playing, playing your fool?_

So he did it. And he prayed the whole way there that this was really not just make-believe.

_No, I can't always be waiting, waiting on you._

_I can't always be playing, playing your fool._


	5. It Ends Tonight

Story Title: Falling Away With You

Chapter Title: It Ends Tonight (The All-American Rejects. A personal favorite. I had a really hard time trying to pick this one)

Summary: Literati

Notes: Again, you guys are freakin' amazing. The last chapter felt half-assed to me and I'm glad you didn't think so. I'm hoping this one will be better since there should be more to actually write about.

12/6/06

I have mass apologies. For the record, I hate National Novel Writing Month. It kicked me in the ass repeatedly. Next year I will write fics so I can update and not be driven into mass insanity.

xxx

He had called himself Dodger for the first time in years. It had been the most gripping thing she had read in that time. Almost more gripping than his handwriting on the specials board the morning her mother gave everyone within four feet of her a hassle about ordering a special omelet.

Dean had been there. That was the morning that Rory realized (on some level, conscious or otherwise) that Luke trusted Jess more than Dean.

Despite all the condescending things he said to Jess regarding his behavior with her and his distrust with him in all other departments, he looked at Dean with the kind of displeasure he reserved exclusively for idiots who knew better than to screw around.

Luke was very protective and it was just ironic that the one that broke her heart was the one he didn't try to chase away. Not really.

_Your subtleties_

_They strangle me_

_I can't explain myself at all._

_And all that wants_

_And all that needs_

_All I don't want to need at all._

All she wanted to do was read the letter over and over until his being and not just his words and cologne and brand of cigarette spilled off of the pages. Rory wanted to peal his love for her off of the pages and show it to everyone, so they'd see it was something real and something palpable.

She didn't want to be the only one who could recognize it.

It was like a wavelength of light that only he and her were capable of seeing. The most unreal color of almost nothing that just luxuriated and was entirely fantastic. It was like the Liberace of colors. Indefinite but fabulous.

_The walls start breathing_

_My mind's unweaving_

_Maybe it's best you leave me alone._

_A weight is lifted_

_On this evening_

_I give the final blow._

He twisted. He turned. In his head he was heading back.

Double time.

Twice as fast to his security blanket.

His lazy roommate, take-out coffee, and books, books, books.

It sort of faded as he watched the mile markers flip through his peripheral vision. It faded because he knew if he didn't do it now, he'd never go. If he hadn't acted in that moment, he would've stayed for the rest of his life. He knew he would've spent the rest of his days completely undone because he didn't know.

Not knowing. Sometimes they say it's better than knowing.

They also say that keeping love to yourself will kill you.

Basically, he was screwed, whether or not he wanted to deal with it.

He writhed in his seat and ached for her touch. Ached so hard that he thought he might combust before he even saw her. His body contorted into shapes so he could be near her. Everything he did was all for her and she was still 300 miles away.

So he drove, steering wheel in one hand, gear shift in the other, with a Marlboro between his fingers and the radio barely audible, toward the only place he was ever really afraid of.

And the one girl who could make him lose his cool.

_When darkness turns to light_

_It ends tonight_

_It ends tonight._

She was lying in her bed, totally swept up into the idiosyncrasy of it all. The way that his emotions and hers were synchronized for once.

She dreamed that he would maul her in the most beautiful way, and he suddenly is realistic with his confession of love.

Then Rory would check her recent calls list or look down at her coat and think that maybe this was some huge, cosmic joke.

But wasn't it over? Hadn't she run out the door with no intention of ever looking back? Hadn't it been over the minute he walked through the door and _wasn't_ Jess?

She turned the thoughts over in her head for a few seconds, working out the kinks, burning away the corrosion on the axles of her clear thinking.

Maybe that had been it. Maybe in that moment she had made the end clear and concise. But maybe it wasn't and he was on his way to her house, spazzing at the first sign of stubbornness with something diamond or gold in his hand.

It was with that idea that her stomach dropped and she looked out the window, just in case.

How to convey the end otherwise, she had no clue. She wouldn't budge, wouldn't speak, and wouldn't cry.

Couldn't cry. That was the correction. She wasn't capable. She shed a few tears on the situation. A couple drops for the sake of change, and then she was done. Coherently going where she had been stupid enough to go before.

But brave enough to try again.

_A falling star_

_At least I fall alone_

_I can't explain what you can't explain._

_You're finding things that you didn't know_

_I look at you with such disdain._

Was he falling down? Was he falling flat on his face by walking down the street and not hiding? Not caring. Not seeing the stares and not feeling the glares.

Oh god, but his stomach? It was twisted up in the most god-awful way. In the sincerest form of guilt, it was absolutely contorted.

His car was hidden down the street behind the diner. Where Jess usually hid it when he went to Walmart.

A blinding pang of guilt shot through his stomach.

The need to smoke.

To breathe easily.

He heard a faint bell sound resonating from around the corner and furious footsteps.

"You have got to be joking me."

_The walls start breathing_

_My mind's unweaving _

_Maybe it's best you leave me alone_

_A weight is lifted_

_On this evening_

_I give the final blow._

An hour later, a few clouds had cleared and she was off of the bed. Pacing spasmodically through the hallway between the neutrality and comfort of her bedroom door and the place where her shoes and jacket were lying.

Did she know herself well enough to predict and control her actions when she left that room? That room nullified her attitude and her actions and made her who she wanted to be so desperately.

She wasn't sure. Maybe she wasn't normal enough. Maybe the minute she left that room she'd find herself staring down the long, dark tunnel of regret and unreasonable assumptions. She might say something ludicrous. She might drive somewhere unforgivably off-limits.

For all she was sure of, she might sit down on the ground in the middle of an intersection and just cry.

But so what? If she wanted to grieve, she would grieve. And if she wanted to lie and seem contented, she damn well would.

So with the same kind of abandon and lack of grace that he had, she made her way over to her shoes, slipped them on, slid her arms into her jacket, and walked out the door.

And she was absolutely ill with every step off the porch and into the unknown. She could feel the ulcer forming larger and larger as she got further and further, and she didn't even know he was there. Lurking. Skulking around corners, not sure why he was there himself, skirting around the places he knew that she knew so he couldn't be framed as the big bad wolf.

As far as she was concerned, it was leaving the house and facing the daylight again that was the thing to fear.

So naïve she too could be.

_When darkness turns to light  
It ends tonight,  
It ends tonight.  
Just a little insight won't make this right  
It's too late to fight  
It ends tonight,  
It ends tonight._

"Wasn't I _just_ on the phone with you this morning?" Luke asked, accusatorily and with a powerful air of warning. "Don't you live in _Philadelphia?_" he said, becoming gradually more incredulous. "And more importantly, do you have any _noble_ reason for coming here?"

"I don't know."

"You-," he started. He stopped when he saw Rory walking across town square with her arms crossed across her chest, not yet aware of the brooding boy who was standing only a matter of blocks away from her, also oblivious to her presence.

"I?" Jess prompted.

"You need to hide somewhere or go home. Have you even seen her yet? She's a wreck. A complete, total, utter wreck. She is just like she was the first time you came around, and I have a feeling you _caused_ it again, too." Jess edged away from him and around the corner, out of her range. Back under her radar unwillingly.

"I don't need to hide from her," he argued.

"Yes, you do. What is it with you and her? Have you got a thing for emotionally unavailable women or is it the other way around? Are you just a magnet for them? Or is it just Rory? Is there something so captivating about her that it drags you 200 miles at the drop of a hat?" Luke demanded in a hushed voice, hidden behind an apartment building.

Jess nodded, obviously. "Yeah, there actually is."

"What could that possibly be?" Luke said, his voice rising.

Jess stared at him, not wanting to say it aloud again. Luke scoffed.

"Look, you can't just throw that out there again. Last time you did that you were the butt of Lorelai's jokes for…hell, Jess! You still are the butt of her jokes because of that! How did you cause this anyway?" Luke inquired. With an assumption, Luke's eyes widened like saucers and he leaned away from his nephew, too afraid of his own impulses.

"What do you mean, 'how did I cause this'? I wasn't even _here_. Come to think of it, neither was she! Save for my cameo at Richard and Emily's, I've been MIA for the past two years thanks to her!" He was almost screaming, not caring anymore that his voice was resonating off the sides of the buildings and probably coming out crystal clear to the rest of the street. Only she would remember his voice, and it was only she that he wanted to.

"What did you do while you were there? Did you sleep with her, Jess?"

"Oh, my God!" he exclaimed, a little horrified and a little remorseful.

"I have to ask questions like this! When I see this girl wandering the streets in the middle of the afternoon in her pajamas looking so completely broken, I have to start wondering why it is that you decide to show up again. And then I start thinking, God forbid, that maybe part of this has a little something to do with you."

"It always does, doesn't it?" Jess asked, a little angry but still unfazed. "Every time something is wrong with her, I'm immediately on the spot."

"You wouldn't be on the spot if you hadn't showed up, Jess. And you damn well know it."

Her footsteps were light, but they were there. And they were the smallest most indefinite noise up to that point to make his stomach drop. But he wasn't anywhere near her yet, she was on the other side of the block, lighting a cigarette that she had just bought from a gas station in complete secrecy.

She only wanted to smell him. Never had the intention of smoking it grazed across her mind. 

All she wanted to do was get that smell into her head. Maybe it could clear her mind.

At least she was hidden. And even if she hadn't been, it wouldn't have mattered.

Because it was that smell that finally made her cry while she smiled. They were silent tears—all they did was race down her face gracefully and land on the ground.

She dropped the cigarette and did her best to grind it out with her foot, her inexperience almost embarrassing.

_Now I'm on my own side  
It's better than being on your side  
It's my fault when your blind  
It's better that I see it through your eyes_

"I don't need to run my reasons for coming here by you. You never asked me before. What's with the sudden interest? You told me that she was trying to get a hold of me. Well here I am, flesh and blood. And all you can do is drag me away from her," Jess said, carrying his bag higher on his shoulder and heading for the door to the diner.

"I'll ask you what I damn well please!" Luke countered. Jess scoffed as he opened the door.

"Huh."

Her heart stopped approximately 3 beats. At least that many.

She could feel the unintentional lack of oxygen hitting her brain cells with the force of a hurricane that was spiraling unyieldingly out of control.

Rory saw those little dots dancing around the edges of her vision. She ignored them of course and walked around the corner, quickly but cautiously.

Swearing on everything she knew, she was absolutely sure that it was him who had said that. She would recognize it until the day she died.

A faint noise, hardly a word. But it acted as his everything. It conveyed distrust, contempt, love, hate, alluded naïveté , and powerful disinterest.

It echoed off the sides of buildings and came to a grinding halt in her heart. And oh God, how it stung. It was like a rusty nail right into her left atrium.

She was looking through the windows of the diner like a spy, but one that wanted to be caught so horribly. She was staring at the back of his head as he and Luke exchanged dirty looks. Jess turned around when he heard a whisper that sounded all too much like his name and caught a glimpse of her out the window. He convinced himself that he was crazy and dumped his bag upstairs and went back downstairs.

She was still outside, without any clue why. She wanted to see him so badly she could not even understand it herself. She knew consciously that it was not the thing to be doing. Rory ought to have been running in the other direction screaming.

But she was just standing there, waiting for him to walk back out and see her. Then maybe there would be something new for her to go on for a while.

Jess ran his hand through his hair one last time and decided he needed to get out for a little while, see if by making the gossip he would either scare her back to school or scare her out of hiding. He had the itching feeling that both were equally possible. So he was anxious to see her response.

Walking out of the diner, he was met by a meek exhale of breath.

One that smelled like cheap cigarettes and an inexperienced smoker.

He whipped around, knowing full well who it was.

Then she saw him, full in the face, with eyes of chocolate and pain. And she stopped feeling the need to cry.

Both of their hearts stopped beating for a second.

"Hi," he said.

It was starting all over again. And only the day would prove how it would end.

_All these thoughts locked inside_

_Now you're the first to know_

_When darkness turns to light_

_It ends tonight._


	6. The Damage in Your Heart

Story Title: Falling Away With You

Chapter Title: The Damage in Your Heart (Weezer)

Summary: Hadn't she been the one that had all along been shocked and trembling while he touched her and looked at her and talked to her? Why was it that now that his hands were shaking and his head was spinning and she would scarcely even look at him? Literati.

Notes: I know, this took forever. Try not to be angry with me! Enjoy!!!!

xxx

They stood there for a while, bells ringing in their ears, hearts beating a little too fast. She was reminded for a brief moment of Logan's heartbeat when he drank too much and she would lie against his chest while it pounded just so hard against his ribs. She shook the thought.

Jess was a little more concentrated when he felt his beating deliberately. He started thinking about hers when they would lie on the couch or sit on the bridge. She was almost afraid it seemed because the beat was so fast and erratic.

They both thought that when their hearts beat now that they were a little damaged and a little old. The sounds would not be familiar at all.

He took in a breath like he was going to say something and she choked back a scream while she raised a hand to silence his impending hello.

"I know, hi," she said, her hand still up and her eyes cast down. They were bloodshot and she didn't want him to see that she had been crying over him. He would know. He would see the red and he would associate it with all the times he made her cry before.

He tried to speak again and she moved her hand a little closer to him. Her breathing picked up and she put her other arm against the building, trying to get a hold.

"Try not to say anything for a minute. I need to think. I know why you're here and it's making my head spin."

_One more time_

_I have crossed the line_

_Now you won't be mine_

_Anymore._

"I thought you were supposed to be in New Haven." She nearly sobbed his voice was so near. Rory almost felt his breath and she could hear his lips when they formed his P's. No, it was too much too soon.

"We need to talk about this somewhere else, I can't do this out here. I have to sit down." Without another word, just an imperceptible nod, Jess walked them both into the diner and into the apartment. Luke hardly noticed, and he didn't care. Though his eyes were wide and his mouth was open, he knew that there was nothing he could do and nothing he could say. So he was passive with his state so aghast.

They walked in and sat on opposite seats in the living area, Jess looking at her, still unable to tear his eyes from her. She couldn't look at him yet, not until she got some of her gumption back.

"Obviously I'm not in New Haven," she said, trying to be a little angry with him.

"Clearly." The air was tense and silent. Don't ask, don't tell.

"And you're obviously not in Philadelphia." He shook his head and was a little annoyed with her tone. Hadn't she been the one that had all along been shocked and trembling while he touched her and looked at her and talked to her? Why was it that now that his hands were shaking and his head was spinning and she would scarcely even look at him?

Because she was the queen of fucking everything he knew. The last temptation.

"Why aren't you at Yale?" he wondered, moving forward, trying to get on equal footing with her attitude.

"I walked out on my boyfriend."

She was candid. Something he had never known in her before.

"Why?" he asked, too taken aback to know how to word it.

"It's not important," she said, casting her eyes down a little again and not at liberty to reveal his infidelity until she was sure it was over.

They were quiet while he thought about what she wasn't saying. Did the look mean it was him? Or did the look mean that she was ashamed too? Rory would not be embarrassed that her relationship had not worked out, but she would be mortified if it did not work because of someone she hardly knew and hardly had any idea of anymore.

"What'd you drive all the way from Philadelphia for?" she asked, her arms crossed over her chest and her elbows balancing on her knees.

"I have absolutely no idea."

_One more dream_

_Vanished up in smoke_

_Now I have no hope_

_Anymore._

"Let's just rip off this stupid ass band-aid, Jess. We both know why we're here. I came here to get away from Logan and, if I got lucky, run into you. You came here because you knew I was here and you aren't sure exactly why you did it but you knew you wanted to see me. I read it all in the goddamn letter you sent me," she said, blatant as ever.

"You got my letter?" he asked quietly while she rumbled.

"Yeah. I got your letter." She let out a long breath she didn't know that she was holding and she squelched a sob while he looked at her with eyes that weren't judging. He was hiding his passion and his anger for just a few more minutes. He would give her the time to decompress and then it would be time to go in for the kill. To convince her that what she was doing was right and that she would have to be entirely out of her head to go back to Logan.

He moved next to her on the couch and she desperately wanted to push him away. She didn't though, instead she pushed her arm against him and then buried her face in his neck.

"Why are you here?" she sobbed against his throat. Jess swallowed hard.

"I just am. I don't know why. I swore I wouldn't come, and the next thing I knew I was parking outside of the diner."

"That weird black Honda around the corner is yours?" she said, fingering the keys that had fallen out of his pocket when he moved over to her. He looked at her while she seemed diabolic and without her noticing, he pulled the soft pack of Newport's out of her jacket pocket.

"And you smoke now?" he said, holding them before her. She went a remarkable shade of red.

"It's not what it seems," she said, tucking the pack back into her pocket and looking at him with pain and damage that was apparent from her scars. Those little emotional squiggles in your eyes.

"I didn't think the letter would have come already," he said, trying to start the conversation again.

"If you had sent it to Yale, it would have taken longer," she said, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her shirt.

"And you wouldn't have been there," he said. She nodded and he tried desperately to get her to look at him.

"Probably not."

"Are you going back?" he asked, a little timid.

"For classes at least." He nodded and she felt the anger build up again. "Look, I left my boyfriend because since the minute you walked back into my life, it's been a freak show. I actually care now when he rolls in at all hours of the night and it didn't use to bother me that he'd be hitting on other girls at the bar he had spent his entire night at.

"I used to be entirely fine with the fact that he had blonde hair. And now when I see it I just get angry. Why did you do this to me again? You came here, and you hardly even looked at me and I fucking lost my mind. That's not fair, how is that even remotely fair? I don't do that to you!" she said, her face turning red and her lips moving in rapid motions.

He felt the blood rush to his head. He was quiet, lethal.

"You don't think that you fuck around with my life too? I've been writing for longer than I can remember and the very thought of you wanting to talk to me makes me blush like a teenage girl and my head gets empty. There's a very real reason why I haven't been in a relationship since you decided you really didn't want to be with me. And you're sitting right here.

"My hands are literally numb I want to touch you so bad right now, do you know that? I see you and I can feel my heart try to jump out of my chest I want to be with you so bad. I can't see straight when the thought of you sleeping with Logan enters my mind. Half of that's because my minds' eye is seeing you naked for the first time and it's fucking awe-inspiring, and the other half of it is the fact that I know now that you don't want to be with me."

His voice had picked up and she had eyes as wide as open skies.

"So you can go along thinking that your life is a disaster because the little dirty thought of me that you keep for rainy days caused you to lose it and break up with your boyfriend. That's fine with me, not a problem. But don't accuse me of having it easy when it comes to you. I drove so many more miles and did so much less because of you."

She quivered on the inside and out. He had rocked her to the bone. She was angry, that much was definite. But there was something quieter about what he just said that was humming through her body.

Admiration.

Arousal.

It was liquid hot and as scary as and slow as lava, rising in her slowly, coming in waves that she didn't expect and couldn't possibly have foreseen.

Everything stopped spinning around her for a second while she looked at him for the first time. The eyes, the hair, the slight curve of his lip, the careful precision of his jaw. It was too much all at once.

It hit with the force of the past and all of the dreams she'd had that weren't even close to the way he looked now. He was so close that she could nearly feel the heat radiating off of his body. Rory imagined for a second how that heat might feel if there was less space between them. Less clothing. Less fear.

Then she demolished that fear. She picked herself up out of the dream and walked right into its reality.

Jess took just a moment to be surprised. Then he came back to life and he felt the spread of heat.

She had leaned forward, quickly, without flourish or warning, and pressed her lips to his. Rory wondered if it had felt this way before, if he had felt so warm or so near.

Jess started to return the kiss when she leaned back, afraid to continue.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said.

_Let it go_

_The damage in your heart_

_Let it go_

_The damage in your heart_

_I can't tell you how the words have made me feel_

_I can't tell you how the words have made me feel._

"This was a mistake," she said, no longer eager to look him in the eye. He surged anger toward her for doing this to him again.

"This is not happening to me again. How can you do this again, Rory?" he asked, trying to shame her into continuing.

"I need a few days to think about this," she said, tucking her hair behind her ears and shaking vaguely.

"Well, I don't have a few days. I'm going to California after the bookstore is settled. You've got a decision to make, and I want you to make it for real this time."

He jabbed. He stabbed. He was that much closer to winning. He was mostly just bitterer than he had been before.

"You are not."

"You want to make a bet on that one?" he asked her, his eyes getting dark and his mood going right along with it.

"You came here on an impulse, how do I know this California thing isn't too?" she wondered, bound and determined to catch him lying.

"Since you don't even know me anymore, there's no way to be sure. Guess you're going to have to go on an instinct here," he said passively as he got up and walked out of the apartment and onto the street, unable to see he was so shocked and so in awe of what he had just said.

He had invited her on this trip, his solo trip. His last self-discovery mission that he hadn't planned on telling anyone about. A two month journey across the country and into a beach front shack with nothing but his laptop, a carton of Camel Lights, and the sunset.

And then there was Rory.

Suddenly he could scarcely imagine the journey without her.

_One more tear_

_Falling down your face_

_Doesn't mean that much_

_To the world._

He felt his instincts charge when he hit the sidewalk outside of the diner and his feet could do nothing but slow down.

He had to be out of his god forsaken mind.

If she said yes, he would be forced to relearn everything about her. It would be like meeting her all over again but with nowhere to run.

And if she said no it would break his heart.

Just about the time that he started to walk away, he heard the door and ignored it.

"Are you definitely going?" she asked, breathless and shaking.

He turned slowly to see her hanging out of the doorway, her eyes begging him for an easy way out.

"Yeah. I am."

_One more loss_

_In a losing life_

_Doesn't hurt so bad_

_Anymore._

"I'm not as free to leave as you are, you know. With Yale and the paper and all."

And the blonde with millions that I've got on layaway, she thought to herself.

"And I've got a job. It won't be the end of the world if I wait a day," he said in a submission that he didn't know that he was capable of mustering.

"When are you going?" she asked, moving toward him a little, her arms crossed in front of her, her lips still tingling.

He could still taste her. He could taste her from before and the moisture from her lips still clung to his, too shocked in itself to dissipate.

"The end of May. You've got some time. But I won't wait forever for an answer. You need to decide right now if this is something you feel like you can handle. If not, I'll get right back into my car and reverse myself into wondering if you'll ever come around and see in me what you used to. That's fine, I did that for years."

She blinked back tears and choked back apologies and arguments that she knew were fruitless.

"And if I say yes?"

_Let it go_

_The damage in your heart_

_Let it go_

_The damage in your heart_

_I can't tell you how the words have made me feel_

_I can't tell you how the words have made me feel._


	7. My Favourite Game

**Story Title**: Falling Away With You

**Chapter Title**: My Favourite Game (The Cardigans from Gran Turismo)

**Summary**: Literati. But that heat still hummed inside of her and was settling in places that he had never even known in her. He never had gotten past that damn belt buckle. All those feelings from so many years ago that she felt only with him were back.

**Notes**: Prepare yourselves! That's all you get for now!

xxx

_I don't know what you're looking for_

_You haven't found it baby, that's for sure_

_You rip me up, you spread me all around_

_In the dust of the deed of time._

"It's been two goddamn days and she hasn't so much as picked up a phone, sent me an email, nothing. A fucking Post-It note would've sufficed. It's enough, I'm almost there."

He was shouting into the phone and steering with his hand draped casually on the steering wheel while his foot pressed down on the accelerator a little further. The fact that he was already going ninety-five, notwithstanding.

"You've gone apeshit, it's official," was the response on the other line.

"I may be apeshit, but I'm not a dumbshit. I mean, you know her about as well as I do. Is this normal?"

"No telling. I'm going to guess it's probably not."

"Fucking peachy, Colin. Really fucking peachy," Logan said with venom in his voice as he hung up and threw the phone against the passenger's side bullet-proof window, laying to rest in the seat.

A drive that should have taken him nearly a half an hour he had managed to complete in seventeen minutes. Without factoring in traffic, probably fifteen.

Logan was beginning to compensate as he heard the engine groan a little at the idea of surpassing one hundred miles per hour.

Compensation. What an interesting theory.

Logan Huntzberger knew it very well. Logan and everyone at Tiffany's, Burberry and the Cadillac dealership knew that his compensation knew no bounds. All his friends, girlfriends and family members knew of the very look on his face that meant death on his credit limits and a heart palpitation at the sight of the balance at the register.

But so many zeroes in all of their emptiness had a morphine effect on Logan Huntzberger.

Spending a thousand dollars for Logan was like a vitamin pill. It kept him sharp as a pin and vile as a prick.

_And this is not a case of lust you see_

_It's not a matter of you versus me_

_It's fine the way you want on your own_

_But in the end it's always me alone._

"Jess?" Rory said, making sure he had heard her right. He looked a little blank as he stood there, halfway down the block, looking back at her with her arms crossed and her plaid pajama pants rolling awkwardly over her shoes, her eyes still red and her lips still a little swollen.

"I guess if you say yes, you're coming," he said, trying to make it real. He could not believe that it had all just come out of his mouth like that. Had he gone insane? He didn't need her on that trip, he couldn't function around her. The very sight of her, even as unprepared as she was, made him want to rip either himself or her clothes into absolute shreds.

It was impulsive, the only thing he ever knew how to be. So it sort of made sense, after all.

"What if something happens," she said, swallowing back her fear, "and I don't end up going?"

Jess shrugged, indifferently as he could pull off though he felt his heart drop into his stomach a little.

"Not much else I can do to convince you otherwise at this point." She was a little afraid that it meant he was giving up on trying to get it to work with her. Like that one kiss and the one proposal had gotten her out of his system.

But that heat still hummed inside of her and was settling in places that he had never even known in her. He never had gotten past that damn belt buckle. All those feelings from so many years ago that she felt only with him were back. Except now she knew the remedy for that ache and that writhing discomfort that flooded into her veins and thundered across her nerves.

"It's still a long ways away. A lot could change by then," she stated by way of explanation.

"Change doesn't have to be for the worst you know," Jess said. The look in her eyes changed again and she started walking towards him.

"There's something I never thought I'd hear you say," she mentioned while she felt the intensity of that discomfort increase proportionately to the shortening distance between them and how quickly her mind was racing.

He felt his head spin. He was halfway tempted to reach up and make sure that it wasn't about to fall off because she was getting a little closer all the time.

"Change is inevitable. Bad things don't always happen to people."

Then she was standing in front of him and there was nothing more to do.

_And I'm losing my favourite game_

_You're losing your mind again._

_I'm losing by baby_

_Losing my favourite game._

'_How hokey is this?_' Logan asked himself when he pulled off the exit ramp and drove into town, bypassing its main sections and pulling into her mother's driveway. Lorelai walked out the door.

"Logan!" she said, surprised.

"Lorelai," Logan said, slowly and low in his voice, as though he had not been expecting her to be the one that would walk out the door.

"I thought you were supposed to be in New Haven," she said, realizing suddenly why Rory had taken the tearful 30 minute drive home that morning. Even in his eyes she could see the panic and the fear. The anxiousness that one whole day had brought to him.

"I am. Where's Rory?" he asked, his eyes moving too quickly to maintain convincing eye contact with her.

"No clue. I came home for lunch and she wasn't here. Have you tried calling her?" Lorelai said while she looked in Rory's room for a beat, searching for her regardless of the fact that she knew that she wasn't there. Logan followed her into the house.

"Several times actually."

"Maybe her phone is off." Logan wanted to give her a sidelong glance to get his point across but couldn't draw it up out of himself fast enough to convey it correctly.

Instead he walked right out the door and got back into his car. Lorelai watched him with her mouth still open and her feet rooted to the floor. Instead of being apathetic, she picked up the phone.

_I don't know what I've been working for_

_Another you so I could love you more_

_I really thought that I could take you there_

_But my experiment is not getting us anywhere_

They stood there for a few seconds looking at one another until Jess started to crack a small smile. Rory followed his lead, not sure where he was going with his happiness. He had never been spontaneous with his happiness. It was a calculated, distant procedure, and even then it was rarely sincere.

He laughed a little and dragged his fingers through his hair. "I'm not exactly sure what's funny about all of this."

She laughed in agreement and shoved her hands into her jacket pockets, looking down at the ground a little bit. "Nothing really is." She looked up at him with her eyes slightly squinted and her voice quietly honest. "I still have a lot of loose ends to tie up in New Haven. Figuring out when I'm going to be done with the semester, talking to my editor at the paper."

Jess cut her off. "Your boyfriend." Her eyes came close to welling with tears and she nodded, casting her eyes down again. He pulled her chin up in proportion to the rate in which his heart sank when he saw her shame.

"Yeah," she admitted shakily, exhaling an emotional and calming sigh.

"He has no clue, does he?" Jess asked, his upper lip stiffening. He was not yet resilient enough to understand what had happened between them.

"I left today because of you, but I'm not sure that he knows that. I intend to tell him," she admitted, chewing on her bottom lip anxiously and pulling her hands closer to her body.

Jess's jaw clenched and absorbed the frustration that sprang to life throughout his body when she admitted that he was still her dirty little secret.

"Does your mom know?" he asked. She widened her eyes at him.

"In case it's managed to escape your attention, this isn't exactly something I planned on. Did I look like I was frantically calling my mom and Luke and my boyfriend while this was happening? This is just you and me right now."

Laughter came to life in his eyes. Laughter full of cynicism. "You know that this wasn't as spontaneous as you make it out to be. We both know you better than that. This is not news to you."

She shook a little at his write-off of her honesty and tried to overcome the sting of the air between them. A sting that was ramped up by his doubtfulness.

"And what? You just came back to Connecticut because you felt like it? Not a chance."

He tried with uncontrolled desperation to muster a solution, coming up as empty as he began. "Then why the hell are we here, Rory? What has brought us back to Star's Hollow?" he came close to screaming.

"I don't know!" she shrieked, her hands held high, completely unsure. "All I know," she said while her voiced edged down with every beat, "is that we're both here. And that's not something to be ignored. We need to just…ratify this moment. I know it sounds stupid and professional and I know that you probably hate how I'm wording this. That doesn't change what's happening. How often do we get second chances like this?"

Jess looked at her for a few seconds while she caught her breath and lowered his blood pressure by staying silent and unclenching his fists.

"How do you suggest we 'ratify this moment' exactly?"

She inhaled sharply. "We should…shake on it or something," she suggested, moving a little closer to him, intent on doing what she had said she would do.

"Sure," he laughed, uncomfortable with her professionalism.

She reached her hand out to his, very ladylike. It was limp at the wrist and her fingers were slender as they reached out to his tan and work-worn hands. Just like that, when his fingers reached the outside of her hand, their lips were together faster than either of them could've understood.

The mechanical burn of the friction in the air was getting too much to bear, and he finally pulled his face away from hers. She opened her eyes wide and he felt the internal tearing of his defenses so cleanly that it was beyond tragedy.

"Did we do that right?" he asked, the smile on his face sinister to everyone but her.

"That'll do," she said, backing away reluctantly. She was suddenly aware that they were in public. Hastily, she wrapped her jacket around herself a little tighter and crossed her arms over her chest, an attempt to keep the judgment from sticking.

Jess simply stuck his hands into his pockets and continued smirking, though his heart was pounding and his palms were sweating. He prayed silently that she hadn't noticed the way he trembled slightly when her fingers snaked around her hand.

_I had a vision I could turn you right_

_A stupid mission and a lethal fight_

_I should've seen it when my hope was new_

_My heart is black and my body is blue_

Logan felt his pulse race, the shots of anxiety that jolted down his body every once in a while increasing not only in intensity but also in the frequency of their occurrence.

And even once he could see her, the panic was still there. And that panic would manifest itself into clenching anger when he saw what she was up to.

She was up to her eyes in anxiety and way in over her head with romantic troubles. And he could see only some of that when she stood on the street with her arms crossed and her head bowed a little.

But there was Jess. And Jess changed the whole picture.

_And I'm losing my favourite game_

_You're losing your mind again_

_I'm losing my favourite game_

_You're losing your mind again_

_I'm losing my baby_

_Losing my favourite game_

Logan pulled to the side of the road while anger flooded fresh into his system, married with adrenaline; a sickening and lethal union. The combination that caused him to pull haphazardly onto the side of the road and throw himself from the car, walking authoritatively across the street.

Jess saw him first. A similar shot of adrenaline coursed through him at this sight, possibly coalesced with fear. Fear that this was the last moment where Rory might be even partially his. He wasn't sure he should tell her. Maybe if he held onto this shard of a second a little longer, he could hold on long enough to keep her there with him.

Suddenly he didn't think he could live without her in the passenger's seat on the way to California.

So he just looked into her eyes and held on tight, hoping that she couldn't tell how panicky he was.

"Want to tell me what exactly you're up to?"

_I'm losing my favourite game_

_You're losing your mind again_

_I try…_

_I'm losing my baby_

_You're losing a savior and saint._


	8. Love is Only a Feeling

**Story Title: **Falling Away With You

**Chapter Title:** Love is Only a Feeling (The Darkness)

**Summary:** Literati. He wasn't trying to be prominent, but he was trying not to be too cliché or too obvious and sit with his feet dangling over the bridge. He knew he sat in plain sight, knew he was being ostentatious, and yet did not care. If he didn't go right to her door and didn't call her, he was still just waiting for her to make the move, and that was all right with him.

**Notes:** I already know that I suck with updates.

xxx

Lorelai dialed Rory's cell phone number frantically as she heard the car screech out of the driveway and down the streets of Stars Hollow to begin on the manhunt. Without anyway to be sure exactly why it was that she needed to be worried, she knew that she was.

"Damn it Rory," she said under her breath as she heard the ringer sound from within her daughter's room. Lorelai hung up the cordless to find Rory's cell lying on her unmade bed. Eleven missed calls flashed on the readout frantically.

Lorelai reached for the discarded piece of metal and plastic and sifted through the missed calls. Home. Logan. Home 2. Logan. Lorelai shook her head and began to pace frantically while she continued to try and figure out what was going on, the phone held in her hand steadfastly.

The home phone rang.

"Yeah," she said, breathless and frustrated.

"You aren't having a good day either, I guess."

"Oh, Luke. Sorry. I didn't mean to sound like, 'Oh, it's just Luke, he doesn't matter.' I mean, you aren't exactly what I was expecting but-," she was interrupted.

"Lorelai."

"Yeah?"

"Can it."

"Right," she said, taking a breath and holding Rory's phone to her forehead. "Why'd you call?"

Luke took a breath and looked awkwardly around the diner, then out the window.

"I don't suppose you've noticed anything weird going on in this town," Luke said jokingly. Lorelai laughed loud and cynically.

"Today is not the day to ask me that. Why?"

"Jess showed up randomly this morning and he and Rory sort of ran into one another."

The silence beat against the walls deafeningly for longer than either had expected. Lorelai hadn't expected the news and Luke had not been anticipating the hostility that resonated so deeply from the other end of the line.

"That's odd," she said, her voice measured. Luke hesitated. Lorelai never measured her reactions, never carefully sidestepped Jess Mariano. Anytime even his mannerisms penetrated her consciousness there was a vehement and violent rush that overcame her, and she rarely censored it.

"Yeah," Luke, said, unsure.

"Rory got a letter from Jess today."

It was Luke's turn to pale.

_The first flush of youth was upon you when our eyes first met_

_And I knew that to you and into your life I had to get_

The cold of being caught had never been so cold.

Jess could not feel his legs and felt suspended in liquid, his vision swimming surreptitiously and his arms useless dead weight at his side, unused tools.

The blood that had rushed into Logan's cholericly colored face was replaced every few seconds as his heart continued to pound and his breathing picked up. His fervor had caused him to grow, so it seemed, until he was eleven stories tall and towering, large and red, in the faces of the two who had just been trapped.

Tears welled, familiarly hot and salty, into Rory Gilmore's baby blues and it couldn't be said that she wasn't the picture of tragedy.

"What are you doing here, Logan?" she said, her voice hardly audible in Logan's ears from being so far up. She shook uncontrollably and all Jess wanted to do was touch her and make her calm again, as she had been only moments before, while he held her eyes (not her waist as he had pretended he had).

He had dreamt of that waist since the moment she turned around in that desk chair while he sauntered into that room, a concentrated surly look hanging from his features. She was so young, so fresh. Her cheeks flushed when he walked in, a visceral feeling of temptation flooding fresh and new.

When he first laid his hands in those curves he could hardly pull away, and it was probably a damn good thing that she did first, running away backwards and stumbling over her excuses (but not before wishing him a stuttered welcome home).

There was something about that dip in her shape that meant so much more to him than anatomy.

Logan looked at it differently. Logan looked at it only anatomically.

"Oh, I asked you first," Logan replied heatedly.

Rory began to mirror his coloring as she hated him even more.

"I live here," she said, her voice wavering on the brink of tears.

"He doesn't," Logan said, pointing brusquely and haltingly at Jess, standing only a yard away, wide-eyed and shocked into awe.

"What do you want Logan?"

_I felt light-headed at the touch of this stranger's hand_

_An assault my defenses systematically failed to withstand._

"She _what_?" Luke said, too quietly to be mistaken for anything but hostile.

"Came this morning," Lorelai spat frantically.

"I swear to God, I don't know what is wrong with him."

"Me neither." They were quiet for a few seconds, holding tight to the comfort that they found in the sounds of each other's breaths. Suddenly she realized that she needed to be panicking, and Lorelai snapped to attention.

"Where are they now?" she quickly asked.

"They left, I have no idea," he answered. "Shit." Anxiety hit him unexpectedly. The two quickly hung up their phones. Luke paced back and forth behind the counter for a second, trying to count to ten and pray that Jess wasn't off seducing his girlfriend's daughter again.

Lorelai put her coat back on and frantically ran out the door, her speed hindered by her leather boots and lack of exercise. Her eyes could train on nothing. They glanced over every thing only momentarily. Her maternal radar hummed quietly but only just so as she ran about town, her heart pounding and her mind racing.

When he realized that he was doing nothing to help by pacing, he went to the window and witnessed without volume the confrontation happening just half a block away.

'_Cause you came at a time_

_When the pursuit of one true love in which to fall_

_Was the be all and end all_

"Well for starters, what the hell happened this morning?" he asked, his head tilted to the side, feigning confusion, emanating rage. Her eyes narrowed.

"You're an asshole," she said, cut off by his rambling.

"You run out of the apartment, furious over _nothing_, don't even give me a chance to _explain_!"

"I didn't need a lame ass explanation! I know what happened! And I'm sick of it happening over and over and _over_ again!" she screamed, red in the face and leaning forward. Her small frame threatened him with a severe beating but he didn't budge.

"You're being fucking ridiculous, as usual," he snarled. She took in a deep breath, her jaw dropping. Jess colored behind her and was about to join in the screaming when Rory sensed his frustration, and threw her small, pale hand back in restraint.

"Excuse me? _I'm_ fucking ridiculous? There's a theory, Logan. How long did you spend making that one up? Did you have to talk yourself into believing that I'm the only reason this happened on the way here, or was this always just rolling around in your head?"

"Rory calm down," he said, realizing that she was this much on edge.

"_No_," she forced out. "I'm not calming down. This is the most serene I've been in a year!"

"Oh, so it's him!" Logan spat, pointing behind her.

"So what if it is? What about 'Lovely Amy'? Is she your little distraction? Your secret lover? Huh? Spit it out punk!" she rapidly pushed from her chest as she started after him. Quickly and reflexively, Jess threw an arm around her waist and pulled her back, her tiny arms a blur, feet kicking.

"I can't deal with this right now," he said, turning back, nearly slamming into a red-faced and pursed-lipped Lorelai.

"Wanna make a big, fat bet?"

Suddenly his face was drained of color and he couldn't speak. Rory was still writhing in Jess's arms as he held her back with considerable effort. It took all he was worth not to let her go and beat him into the sidewalk, to watch her just finally let go. But he couldn't, he knew she'd regret it later if she did. He needed to preserve the anger in some way. She needed to transfer it, or else hold onto is so that once he was really gone and they were really over, she didn't look at it like a huge mistake, and extend that sentiment to him. He needed her to stay justifiably angry, and that was why he held onto her waist.

His heart was pounding triple time. One time for regularity, one for the anger rising in his throat, and one for the fact that he was so protectively wrapped around her, as he had wanted to be for oh-so long.

"Go back to New Haven or I swear to god Logan-," Lorelai started, shaking her head, rigid because she was so irate.

"Excuse me?" he rudely replied.

"Get out this town and my face right now or I will tell him to let my tiny daughter go and beat the crap out of you," she threatened, her tone even and measured.

"I'll help," Luke said, coming up from behind Lorelai, equally pissed.

"Count me in," Jess said, sounding half-strangled as he continued restraining Rory who was now only grunting her disdain and all but crying.

He swallowed hard, realizing how outnumbered, and hated, he was becoming, and shrank back down to size.

"I should've guessed," he said, one of his last attempts to maintain his pride. He turned back to Rory, who was now wild-eyed and if possible, even angrier.

"Don't worry about coming back," he threw her way. She nailed him right back.

"That was why I moved out, idiot." She finally broke free from Jess and walked up to him languidly, menacing. "I'll let you know where to ship the rest of my things."

"Sounds perfect." They stood in the silence and Logan tried again. "I'll be telling my father about this."

"Go right ahead. Explain it all. I'm sure not even you can spin this that much, Logan."

"Whatever," he said, shaking his head.

"Leave."

"Fine." He stood, waiting for her to force him.

"Don't make me force you into that car," Luke growled from behind him. Logan turned paler than before and finally turned toward his car.

"You'll regret this," he said to her as he hauled himself into the driver's seat.

"I doubt it," she replied flatly.

And then he started the car and squealed off the street. Everyone was silent for a couple of seconds as he wove his way out of the town before Lorelai spoke up.

"I'm a tad bit extra-peeved at the fact that he can squeal out." Luke turned to her, too used to these random outbursts to not respond accordingly.

"Rev the engine and throw it into a low gear. When you let off the brake your tires spin for a second before they catch and that's where the squeal comes from," he quickly explained, his eyes never leaving the road that led out of town. The road that still bore the tire marks from Logan's Land Rover. Nobody seemed to catch or want the humor, and that didn't bother Luke at all.

Anger still pulsed through Rory quickly and it consumed her almost whole. She forgot for a second that she was in her pajamas, her eyes tear-stained again and her body shaking.

"I can't believe this," she said under her breath.

_Love is only a feeling_

_(Drifting away)_

_When I'm in your arms I start believing_

_(It's here to stay)_

_But love is only a feeling_

_Anyway_

"Is he really the reason you left?" Lorelai asked, looking at a sheepish looking Rory, standing in the kitchen, her arms crossed over her chest. She nodded a little.

"Part of it."

"Do you have a place to live?" She nodded again. Lorelai ran her tongue over her teeth and took a frustrated breath. "Who with?"

"Paris," she croaked, her self-inflicted shame coupled with the fact that since the adrenaline had ceased to pump into her veins, she had been dead-tired.

Lorelai just nodded and walked over to the coffee maker.

"Sit."

xxx

"This isn't my fault, for the thousandth time," Jess almost roared at Luke, who had dragged him up to the diner shortly after the showdown.

"I don't see how it isn't."

"It's not like I told her to leave her boyfriend. She did that on her own." The pulse in Luke's neck became more pronounced.

"That whole ordeal outside could've been avoided if you hadn't been there."

"Wrong. That whole ordeal could've led to something way bloodier, had I not been there." Luke barked laughter.

"You think that your presence didn't add to the insanity? Come on, you know better than that." His jaw clenched and his chest heaved.

"They obviously were well on their way to being over."

"You really think that she came back just so she could break up with her boyfriend to be with you?"

Jess snapped. "You don't even know what you're _talking_ about! You didn't hear our conversation, you don't know what she or I are thinking!"

"I think I know what you're thinking."

"You are no longer my guardian and she's old enough to make her own decisions."

"That's fine. Why don't you tell Lorelai that, see how that goes over," Luke said, hauling a thumb backwards over his shoulder.

"We aren't seventeen anymore," Jess pointed out.

"No shit."

_The state of elation that this union of hearts achieved_

_I had seen, I had touched, I had tasted and I truly believed_

_That the light of my life_

_Would tear a hole through each cloud that scudded by_

_Just to beam on you and I_

"You really want to do this to yourself again? You want to go through all the pain again when he leaves and doesn't say goodbye or says he coming back and never shows up? Because, I'm not ready to see you do that all over again, and I need to believe that you can do it on your own," Lorelai said, her hands wrapped around her coffee mug, her face a picture of disapproval.

"I'm not seventeen anymore. I'm not as optimistic this time around as I was the first time," Rory explained, her voice scratchy with distress.

Lorelai nodded. "So you think this is a good idea?"

"It's an idea."

"And you're prepared to have your heart ripped out again?" she casually quipped.

"More ready than ever. It's happened a couple of times now; it's starting to feel normal."

"And you know I still don't like him?"

"I hadn't expected that sentiment to change too much."

"And you _still_ want to give this a shot?"

"Yes," Rory exhaled, smiling from behind her puffy eyes.

_Love is only a feeling_

_(Drifting away)_

_When I'm in your arms I start believing_

_(It's here to stay)_

_But love is only a feeling_

_Anyway, anyway_

He sat in the gazebo with his book held tight between his hands and his head hung over the text. He wasn't trying to be prominent, but he was trying not to be too cliché or too obvious and sit with his feet dangling over the bridge. He knew he sat in plain sight, knew he was being ostentatious, and yet did not care. If he didn't go right to her door and didn't call her, he was still just waiting for her to make the move, and that was all right with him.

And yet even though all of this was something he had done consciously, he couldn't calm down enough to read the text thoughtfully. His hands shook a little because he knew that he wanted her. He shook because she had without question left her boyfriend only an hour before.

"How long have you been on that page?" she asked, leaning against the frame of the archway with her arms crossed across her chest.

He looked up with eyes that were hopeful, unable to hide the emotion because of the shock. He smirked when her comment registered.

"About ten minutes." She grinned at him knowingly. The sun was down and the only light by which he could read was coming from the lamps that were scattered throughout the square. The light bounced off of her hair and glittered in her eyes, though the rest of her was almost entirely ensconced in darkness.

"I thought you might already be back in Philadelphia by now," she said, moving to sit across from him, carefully seating herself on her hands. Their knees came close to touching and he leaned back against the bench a little.

"Why?"

"That wasn't exactly my finest hour," she said with sizeable absurdity.

"I've been privy to more than one of your moments of rage, no big deal," he said, trying not to set her off to dwell on what had happened.

"Thanks for holding me back," she almost whispered, meekly looking at their feet.

"No problem," he responded quietly. She had changed her clothes since he saw her a few hours ago. She had a complexion about her that he knew meant a good cry, movies with her mother, a shower, and a few cups of coffee. Her outfit at this hour dictated her intentions of coming to see him and her posture read as nervous.

"I'm sorry you had to see that. He's not usually like that." Jess nodded. _Has been every time I've seen him_.

"You going back to school?" he asked, hoping she'd shake her head and jump into his arms.

"Yeah, Monday night. I'm taking a 'sick' day from work." Jess just looked at her. "Logan's dad is my boss."

"Yikes."

"Yeah." They continued to sit there, unsure. Two stolen kisses and being able to know when to restrain someone had left them insecure about what should come next. "When are you going back?"

"Probably Monday. I'll go back when I have to go back," he shrugged.

"About California-," she started.

"Don't worry about it; I'll understand if you don't want to come anymore." His words hit her like broken glass.

"I wasn't going to say that I didn't want to come," she said, sounding hurt. He looked her straight in the eye when he comprehended her tone and felt even more confused than before.

"Then what were you…?"

"I was going to ask you if I was still welcome," she said. Rory's eyes went liquid at that point and Jess remembered that teary-eyed look that he had become so familiar with today. He reached up and wiped her eye as a tear started to race down her cheek.

"Yeah, you're still welcome," he smiled. She grinned in return and yanked her hands out from under her to wipe her own eyes.

"So what does this mean, are we…?" Jess blew out a sigh and giggled uncomfortably.

"I have _no_ idea." He looked at her seriously. "Do you want to be…?"

"I'm not sure," she said, shaking her head and looking off in another direction. She scoffed. "I've been imagining being in this position for months and I still can't do it right."

Jess felt his heart soar and he resisted the urge (one that he had never known before) to dance and sing. "You have?" he hopefully asked.

"Yeah, and yet the only thing I've wanted to say to you just won't seem to come out," she said, looking upward, trying not to choke on it.

She sighed one more time and looked at him.

"Despite my best efforts to forget about you and what happened in high school…and for that matter, my freshman year of college, I think I may still very well be in love with you," she uttered slowly.

He couldn't think, and he sure as hell couldn't speak. The most pleasant warm sensation overcame his body when her lips stopped moving and those eyes switched over to vulnerable again.

Jess lifted one hand to her face and she relaxed after the tense moment where she wasn't sure what she wanted. He brought his lips to hers slowly, giving her every opportunity in the world to change her mind and take it back, run away from him and what he was about to do to her.

Their lips touched lightly at first, their eyes slowly sliding shut as she let herself float over her body for a moment.

"Thank you for that," he said when they parted from the kiss.

"You don't have to say it back to me, I know it's been a long time and I've done you wrong too," she declared. He shook her head and smiled at her.

"If you think I ever got over being in love with you, you're more psycho than I first thought." She smiled at him again, and tried hard not to think about Yale and the newspaper or Paris and Doyle or even Colin and Finn. She pushed back memories of the Life and Death Brigade and conversations lacking the letter 'e'. Soon enough 3,500 miles of Americana would stamp it out, but for now, she thought of nothing more than the mocha of his eyes and the latte of his skin.

_Love is only a feeling_

_(Drifting away)_

_When I'm in your arms I start believing_

_(It's here to stay)_

_But love is only a feeling_

_Anyway, anyway_

"Rory-

Found this in your closet. Looking for favorite sweater. Evil child.

Depending on how your night went, you can either feel free to open this or put it back where I found it (top shelf, dangerously high up for a woman in spike heels, evil child).

Night sweets."

The Jess Box was sitting on the kitchen table, almost entirely covered in duct and packing tape. A weak attempt at compartmentalizing him into a safe corner of her mind.

Rory thought about it for a second, touching the box, knowing to this very day every single thing that she and Lane had shoved in there after he left. Each time it had been opened to add another artifact another layer of tape had added to the mass.

Smiling, Rory went to the drawer, pulled out paring knife, lifted the large box, and carted it off into her room, a grin on her face as she closed the door behind her.

_Love is only a feeling_

_(Drifting away)_

_And we've got to stop ourselves believing_

'_Cause love is only a feeling_

_Anyway._


	9. Caring is Creepy

**Story Title**: Falling Away With You

**Chapter Title**: Caring is Creepy (The Shins)

**Summary**: His dreams were laced with airy shadows of the women he had left behind in the last few years (his woeful attempts at pushing Thumbelina out of his head). Amy, Lauren, Kim, Kat, Nikki; they all haunted him with the ghosts of their laughs and vague flashes of their eyelashes batting over vacant eyes. Literati

**Notes:** Thanks for the feedback! I'd like to particularly thank **pamhalliwell**, who gives me incredible reviews and makes me feel like I can walk on water ).

xxx

_I think I'll go home and mull this over_

_Before I cram it down my throat_

_At long last, it's crashed, its colossal mass_

_Has broken up, into bits in my moat_

"Hey, when are you getting home? I've got some dinner ideas. I've been itching for Chinese as of late, but Thai has also treated us very well in the past. Ideas?" Nick quickly said when Jess picked up his phone around 9 that night, after an awkward return from the square.

"I'm actually out of town," he hesitated, bracing himself for the disapproval.

"Oh," Nick said, sounding dejected and somewhat lonely, odd noises when interlaced with his slight Boston accent. "So you went."

"Yeah."

"Huh."

"That's my line," he tried to joke.

"Seemed to fit my vantage point a little better." Jess nodded and felt like smiling. He knew how unhappy Nick was with him over his decision to go. He had been insistent, almost annoying about him not going.

Jess sighed when neither spoke and tried to turn the conversation from himself. He spun the wheel.

"I'd go for the Chinese. Food Zone, though it sounds like a joke, is probably your best bet."

"Mhm," Nick quickly replied, tight-lipped.

"Are you actually pissed that I came here?"

"Just wondering why you're being a fucking chick."

"'Scuse me?" Jess asked, perplexed. He was leaning against the headboard of his old bed by himself (he still hadn't adjusted to the idea that Luke was almost always at Lorelai's), feeling very alone up until his phone rang.

Her breakup scene with Logan had driven them apart. It was a supernova and all they had been were wandering dust particles that found themselves consistently running into one another. Both had been expecting there to be a massive vacuum in her life once he was gone, and it was simply assumed that he would take his place. Together they would collide in the place where Rory and Logan had been and both were sure that things would be cataclysmic and phenomenal.

Instead of that vacuum, they were forced to deal with the unpleasant sensation of floating away from one another, slowly but surely, into space.

And unless one of them fought it and halted that movement, soon enough they might float too far apart, and find it impossible to return.

It wasn't as if he wasn't determined to get her back.

(It was a constant flutter in his brain, that need.)

And he wasn't intentionally rethinking _everything_.

(Sometimes his mind just ran away with him.)

Certainly Nick's words hadn't stung him in any way, shape or form.

(He just was upset that his opinion on the Chinese food he wouldn't be eating that night wasn't valued.)

"I thought your stupid 'I'm gonna try and argue against everything he says' bit this morning would've gotten doing things you KNOW you aren't supposed out of your system. Guess not." The room was dead silent on the other line and Nick's breathing was viciously low.

"You don't even know her, and you certainly don't understand the situation better than I do," Jess argued. He wasn't sure why. A year of living with Nick had taught him volumes about unyielding tenacity.

"Sometimes it takes and outsiders' perspective to help you see things you didn't before."

"What exactly are you insinuating?" Jess asked, his mouth held at a confused angle and his eyes dangerous. His voice threatened Nick; dared him to say anything contrary to what he had been doing. The free hand that was holding his book was now dangling as the curve in his elbow locked into place over his bent knee.

"If you go for this right now, you're the rebound guy." Nick's voice hadn't fallen much, but it was hard to argue against his moderate fear of the dark and thoughtful man with the hair. "You're not a basketball player, much less a basketball. You don't want to be the rebound guy."

"How do you know that I'm going to be a rebound guy?" Jess questioned, astonished and feigning curiosity.

"Any guy who dates a girl right after her last 'relationship' is the rebound guy. He refreshes her memory. It's like a crash course on the beginning of a relationship. He's a practice. Girls don't expect much out of them.

"Usually this isn't a horrible thing for a guy. Think though--this is THE girl. The Last Temptation, as you so chickishly put it the other night. She's it. And regardless of how in love with you she is and how done with Mr. Snobby-Ass Tool Whose Head Jess Wants to Bang Against a Brick Wall Until it Cracks Like an Egg, she's going to expect the same things out of you that she would expect out of a rebound guy. She's going to demand your attention. Rebound guys don't do that; they keep their social and dating lives completely separate, and typically prefer their buddies over some chick. She's going to want real dates. Rebound guys go for a beer and then expect her to want to go back to his apartment. She's going to want commitment. That's when rebound guys go running."

Jess sighed and his head fell to one side. "And?"

"Now, my theory is that the girls do this intentionally and never expect the rebound guy to commit or care. Rebound guys don't care about getting yelled at or when girls cry. They're really good at blowing everything off. The girl is pretty much just trying to remember how much she can get away with because, chances are, during her last relationship, at least toward the end, she could get away with anything.

"If this is "The Girl" and "The One", you're not going to do any of those rebound guy things. You're going to tell her, "Oh, I'm in love with you" and "I only want to be with you," and it might very well make the situation worse rather than better."

"You're saying she doesn't know what she wants and I don't know what I'm doing?" Jess said, comatose from the lengthy explanation.

"I'm saying that she might think she knows what she wants, but will handle it poorly, and that you think you know what you're doing, and I trust that you've done this before, but this situation is definitely different." Nick paused. "Basically yeah. She doesn't know what she wants, and you're clueless."

"Thanks for that briefing on dating, Dr. Phil," Jess sarcastically quipped.

"Just trying to shed some light." There was a pregnant pause and Jess felt a knot forming in his throat from misuse. He had been stonewalled by the lengthy explanation that Nick had given him. Though Nick was typically the more verbal of the two, it wasn't saying much (especially in comparison to Jess), and usually he kept the ranting to a minimum.

Jess tried clearing his throat of the knot, but he imagined it had long since grown hands and fingers and was now clutching at his vocal cords, desperately trying to stay put.

_It should have no problem; I've inhaled enough tar in the past5 years or so that it should be relatively easy to hang on,_ he thought, trying not to let Nick hear him.

"I'm really hoping that repeated coughing shit means you actually do have some doubts or reservations about this whole thing," Nick snapped on the other line.

"Yeah," Jess said, looking around at the empty apartment, uncomfortable with the solitude.

"Yeah what?" Nick said, pushing him to continue.

"I've got a few doubts," Jess said with a monotone. Painfully disinterested. That would be the title of the new book. How ironic?

"Good," Nick said, surprised that he had succumbed to the pressure so quickly. "So, you were saying something about Food Zone?"

_Lift the mattress off the floor_

_Walk the cramps off_

_Go meander in the cold_

Three steps.

Breathe.

Two more steps.

Breathe.

Stop. Turn around. Three steps.

Breathe.

Early spring was brutally unkind in Connecticut. Brash. Chilly. Windy as _hell_. Unforgiving.

Maybe it was just what he needed; something that wouldn't let him just…_forget_. He needed a constant reminder. When the wind whipped at him from behind, it was the surprise of seeing her again (although he had known it would happen all along). When he turned on his heel, it was the kiss-Oh god the kiss. Sweet, soft, gentle. Oh so reminiscent of Saturday afternoons in 2003. Pink lips colliding with his thin and crooked ones, her hand laid so gently on his chest.

He shook it out of his head and concentrated on his pacing, maneuvering around empty boxes and garbage bags.

When the gusts caught him in the face, it was Logan, standing before the two of them, feeling awfully close and quite reconciled. The wind brought back that cold. That numbness that takes over when you get caught.

Breathing even did something odd to him, reminding him of the day (oh god what a day). Those calming breaths that he was trying so desperately to have—they were looking at her when she said "I love you." He'd dreamt that image in his mind in a million different ways, under a million other conditions (never any quite like these) and then it was there and it was like breathing out a breath that had been paining him for far too long to hold in. It reminded him of fragile footsteps and the unraveling (but good unraveling) of the great knit sweater that had become his problems with his past and how his mind just shuts down when he smokes that stress cigarette.

Cigarette. Cigarettes. Lots. That's what he needed.

But unless he wanted to get back into the car and drive all the way to Hartford to a 24-hour wannabe Kwik-E-Mart he was just going to have to deal with it.

He kicked a particularly uninteresting trash bag in frustration, praying that it wouldn't rip open and spew diner-gunk at his shoes.

Shit. He had not packed another pair of shoes.

Who was he kidding? He didn't really own many other pairs of shoes. A dressy set that he bought for Liz's wedding (there was a good time) and a few worn pairs from his days of hauling ass away from the cops or responsibility (depending on the day). These brown, indescribably nondescript boot-like things were just about all he had.

So if he got diner-gunk on them, he was fucked.

He sighed a little when the force hadn't cut a hole in the plastic and went back to pacing, though a little less fervent now that he had almost destroyed his only pair of shoes.

"_Should've made a list,"_ she sang tauntingly in his head. He shook her voice out of his ear. She'd been doing that for a couple of weeks now; periodically jumping in with her sage words of wisdom in her "I told you so" tone of voice. _"Should've made a list," "I would've called first," "Shouldn't have had that third drink," "Remembering her last name would've been good." _

She nagged him, a little, when she made her uncannily well-timed appearances on the forefront of his brain, his mistakes held under her blazing glare. She inspected them, questioned their maker (and the wiseness he possessed), peered at them from a collection of angles before coming up with precisely the biting, yet fitting comment that would slowly tap his brain into logical thought. She would smirk a little as those words left the lips that he had imagined in his head supernaturally, ever-so pleased with herself for what she had accomplished.

In his head, she was small, even the size of Thumbelina when he thought it so. And though he envisioned her so tiny, she was so much more real to him than what she scolded him for.

A time or two, he had wanted to hear what she had to say so badly that he made her ten feet tall; a formidably frightening experience. Her voice remained softly taunting, to a tune he could not and did not care to discern. It was all hers. Rory's Malevolence. A composition that he had coined as such one late night when she watched him disapprovingly from over the top of _Anna Karenina_, as he stumbled over a conversation with distraction number twenty-two.

_Hail to your dark skin_

_Hiding the fact you're dead again_

_Underneath the power lines seeking shade_

_Far above our heads are the icy highs that contain all reason_

She saw right through him. Like the song that resonated in his brain when she occupied it so perfectly and so casually could, without secret, unmask the fact that the only lights in his life were Nick, Truncheon, Luke, and the hope that one day, maybe just one day soon, she would come back.

He got no pleasure from her penetrating stare and how her voice always managed to weaken his defenses (and yet somehow, every now and again, build them up in just the right way); Jess hated that he couldn't hide. Even though he knew that she wasn't real, even though he was sure that she was as fictionalized to him as his dreams, he felt the guilt and the darkness that she broke open when she descended into his mind.

It was like her brightness in his life made the shadows look that much murkier.

Suddenly, he stopped pacing.

(Was he finally getting tired?)

Something about a smell he had just caught was thrown him backwards into what had seemed like a prehistoric era that he had only ever heard about. Something…thanksgiving-y. Suddenly he was back at that table in the diner, having Thanksgiving dinner with Rory and her mom and Luke (oh GOD what a scenario that would be now) and every movement, every brush of her arm against his, was vivid again.

In his mind, the memory was still there. It wasn't like it had gone forever. But nothing about it had ever seemed real. Like, for the most part, it hadn't really happened.

Jess scratched his head as he smiled (but only just a little) to himself. It was the coffee fumes mixed with the undeniably iconic smell of turkey gravy. The only time in his life that had been forced to couple the two in his mind had been that day (up until now of course).

Secretly he wondered what had made the smell happen upon him with such uncanny timing.

He shook his head again. Maybe it was just all in his head.

_It's a luscious mix of words and tricks_

_That let us bet when we know we should fold_

His dreams were laced with airy shadows of the women he had left behind in the last few years (his woeful attempts at pushing Thumbelina out of his head). Amy, Lauren, Kim, Kat, Nikki; they all haunted him with the ghosts of their laughs and vague flashes of their eyelashes batting over vacant eyes.

He remembered high-healed shoes walking seductively down the sidewalk, smeary red lipstick and how it clung to the cigarette butts of thousands of Virginia Slim 100's that pooled in the bottoms of glass ashtrays from the bar. Bar tabs from god-only-knows-how-long-ago flashed through his mind, and he remembered how freely all of them drank when in his presence, encouraging the same behavior in him. The bob and sway of too much liquor crept into his slumberous musings, troubling him more deeply than the women.

Tremulously he continued to stumble through his necessary slumber, elated at last at the sight of daylight.

Sun crept slowly into the apartment. It was the first sunrise that he had witnessed from his bed in that room. Usually it seemed too bright, intrusive. Today it was welcome, and slowly climbed the walls and warmed him back from his half-dead musings on his past.

(Was it his past already?)

But he was scared. Scared that he couldn't change. Afraid that, no matter what, he had become a womanizing, grade-A charmer. He was afraid that when they did inevitably part (he pushed that from his brain), that no matter how much he understood now, he'd want to push her back out as he had trained himself to do since she left him on that bus.

_On rocks I dreamt of where we'd stepped_

_And of the whole mess of roads we're now on._

"You're awake?" Luke asked, his face tracing the purest form of astonishment that Jess could recall.

Jess stood by the window, looking out into the sun, for once glad that Luke had showed up. The company couldn't kill him.

"Yeah," he said groggily. "What time is it?" he asked to break the silence.

"5:30. I came to make sure you were still here." Luke stood rigid in the doorway, unsure whether or not he was permitted to enter the room. Jess had seemed to fit in it so well right then.

"Here I am," he replied flatly. They stared each other down for a second, each wondering separate thoughts regarding him and Rory and what had happened the day before. Jess entertained the idea that she had thought of him warmly all night, then regretted it when he remembered all of those doubts that plagued him only hours before.

He crossed the room to retrieve a shirt he had long discarded on the floor and placed it alongside his bag, pulling another from it and sliding it over his head dexterously. Luke scratched the back of his head and looked in other directions, feeling out of place.

"You need help downstairs?" he asked as he pulled a pair of socks onto his feet, which he covered with his shoes. His only pair of shoes. He smiled wryly to the floor.

"If you want. No big deal," Luke said, adding in a shrug for good measure. He was always trying to look nonchalant.

"It's Sunday. You always need help on Sundays," Jess stated, looking at him dryly. Luke backpedaled and puffed out his chest, bracing himself for the answer to the question he was so hesitant to answer.

"I thought you might want to, you know, talk to her or something." It came out meeker than he had expected, almost a whisper (though keep in mind it was Luke). Jess shrugged as he crossed the room to his old dresser and dragged a comb through his hair, as he so often used to when he wanted to avoid looking at Luke. Fearing that he could see the truth. In profile he could be so much more deceiving.

"If she wants to talk, she knows where I am." Nick would've been so proud.

"That is," Luke started, sighing and sitting dejectedly in a chair at the kitchen table, "the stupidest thing that I have heard you say in a long time."

"I'm happy to retard my intelligence to aid your reminiscing," he said understatedly into the mirror.

"Jess-," Luke said before being interrupted.

"Look," he drew out, turning around with the comb in his hand, his eyes already midway through a dramatic roll. "I already came here. I made a move, and I didn't have to. I sent her a letter. I came to her home town." Jess pointed at him with the comb. "This is no longer my problem."

Luke scoffed at him, amused. "You have obviously never had to be in a real relationship with a Gilmore," he commented, a smile dancing across his face, his arms crossed across his chest.

"Yes I have," he said, moving back to the dresser to continue on his hair.

"The few months in high school that you treated Rory like crap do not count. Besides, you weren't around that much. And I'm pretty sure your relationship was about 85 physical."

"I did not treat her like crap. And no, it was not," Jess said.

"Yes you did," Luke quickly corrected before he could be argued with again. Jess conceded unwillingly with a shake of his head and no more words.

_Hold your glass up, hold it in_

_Never betray the way you've always known it is_

_One day I'll be wondering how_

_I go so old just wondering how_

_I never got cold wearing nothing in the snow_

"And your point was?" Jess wondered as Luke shook his head at him.

"If you are dating a Gilmore, it will _always_ be your problem. It may have nothing to do with you! It might be about something that they don't have anything to do with. But it will _always_ be your problem. Even just a little bit. Something about it will be your responsibility."

"Why is everyone giving me relationship advice? Did you think that I just sat on my hands when I moved out?"

"Everyone's giving you relationship advice because you clearly are an idiot. And, no, for the record, I didn't think that. But if any of those had worked out, would you be here after Rory again?"

"I don't know." Jess exhaled and seemed to deflate as he leaned against the dresser, his arms over his chest and his feet crossed at the ankle.

"Do you want to talk to her?" Luke asked.

"Yes," he responded. A knee-jerk reaction that he had never been able to beat out of himself. He would always want to talk to her. He loved talking to her.

"Then you better go and do it. Because, as brash as they are, they won't do that kind of stuff. Like I said, this, from now on and _forever_," he drew out the word to indicate its importance, "is your problem."

_This is way beyond_

_My remote concern of being condescending_

His jacket was on and he was halfway out the door, adjusting his collar in an attempt at calming the shake that was quickly overcoming his will power that had kept it suppressed. Luke was standing behind the counter, immobile in the center of chaos.

He took one last, pleading look at the Formica praying that Luke would tell him that a loophole existed somewhere in this plan. Instead he just looked at him, and every rigid plane of his face told him "no."

_All these squawking birds won't quit_

_Building nothing, laying bricks_.

The outside of the house looked the same, with the exception of a few minor structural improvements that he was sure Luke had been recruited to do over the last few years. He knew that the inside would be different.

He wanted so desperately to know if she noticed it too. If she felt that weird 'first-day-of-class' anxiety when she walked into this house that had once been her home and realized that things were different. New rules. New family. New appliances.

But he couldn't ring that doorbell, or knock on that door, or tap on her window. He refused to believe the rules.

He did not, and would not, take relationship advice.

With his hands in his pockets, and his chin resting on his chest, he sat down on the porch and huddled into himself.

He would only meet her halfway.


	10. Bathwater

**Story Title**: Falling Away With You

**Chapter Title**: Bathwater (No Doubt)

**Summary**: It wasn't as if the memories themselves were bad; not all of them. It was more the fact that she was ripping the top off of a tank of compressed emotion and it poured out unrelentingly. There was nothing she could do to stop the flow once it started; it was volcanic in behavior

**Notes**: I know—this has taken me an OBSCENELY long time to finish, but it is nice and long (colossal in fact)! Pam Halliwell gets MAJOR shout outs for this, as does my beloved Nikki ).

**Disclaimer**: I am in no way affiliated with Amy Sherman-Palladino, any of the writers, producers, directors or others employed by Warner Bros. and Gilmore Girls. K? Good.

"Ugh," she groaned the following morning, holding her head in memoriam to a preceding night of cheap wine and dusty memories.

"Ha! See, old boyfriends will do that to you," Lorelai said, prancing happily around the kitchen in her sweats. Rory rolled her eyes at her and slumped against the doorway to her bedroom.

"I think that it was more the wine, less the old boyfriend," she said, quietly, happily. Though the pain beat against the back of her eyes and pushed outward on her skull, she still smiled.

Old boyfriend was no longer chained exclusively to her past. Old boyfriend was here, flying freely at the forefront of her mind and her memory, swimming through Arbor Mist and books she had vowed how many years ago never to open again.

"Wine?" Lorelai asked, finally peering into the sink. "No glasses." She paused for a second, looking puzzled until realization finally struck. Her gaze lost focus and she smiled reminiscently at the cabinets, a look of laughter in her eyes. "Ahh," she drew out, giggling a little as Rory rested her head on her arm which was laid across the table.

"Hmph," she grunted, moving only slightly.

"Someone found the emergency alcohol stores," Lorelai teased.

"Yes, I did. And could you get any cheaper?" Rory quipped, opening an eye and glancing at her mother.

"No one said the emergency alcohol stores needed to be fancy. It's just about getting the job done," Lorelai defended, though not offended. Rory smiled for a second.

"'It's about who lasts the longest, not how fancy you are getting there,'" Rory jibed.

"Aw, how cute. Quoting Mommy while hungover. I was thinking maybe I'd make some nice, slightly undercooked eggs and some very, very dry wheat toast. Then I thought I'd get out every pan and shoebox in this kitchen, bang it on a hollow metallic surface a few times, and put it away _extremely_ noisily," Lorelai retorted, grinning.

_You and your museum of lovers_

_The precious collection you've housed in your covers_

_My simpleness threatened_

_By my own admission_

She finished reading the note from her mother and touched the top of the box for just a second, rethinking how smart it would be for her to open it again.

When she sat with it on her bed and finally cut through the thick tape, she got one whiff of his cologne and the diner and cigarette smoke all mixed together before she realized she needed to dull the blow.

With the bottle open in her hand and the other reaching in blindly, she clenched her eyes closed, a little afraid of what she'd reveal first.

Oliver Twist had required a good 5 second chug from the bottle. Distillers tickets help her make it to an even half-bottle all on her own.

But when she saw the red Solo beer cup from the party, she drained it all, letting the heat from the alcohol rip through the ice cold feeling of regret in the pit of her stomach.

It wasn't as if the memories themselves were bad; not all of them. It was more the fact that she was ripping the top off of a tank of compressed emotion and it poured out unrelentingly. There was nothing she could do to stop the flow once it started; it was volcanic in behavior.

The bottle of questionably old Arbor Mist was doing very little to douse the lava as it poured out of the cardboard, even seeping from the cracks. But very little was better than nothing, so she kept on drinking.

There were moments throughout that she laughed. When she was trying to figure out why there was a crumpled paper napkin inside, she remembered that she had shoved it in her pocket when they were on the picnic, while he picked through, disgustedly of course, the remains of what food was in their refrigerator.

She stuck her hands in her pockets as they walked in and out of the bookstore, into the pizza parlor. She was afraid that if her arms swung freely, she might accidentally take hold of his hand and be too pleased by it to let go. She had almost pretended, at a very early point in their relationship, that this paper napkin from her kitchen was his hand.

Rory set it aside gently with the other things and stuck her hand in once more, the wine starting slowly to hit her.

She pulled out the belt buckle that had gotten in his way that night at Kyle's party. She felt its contours for a few moments and tried to quell the bile rising in her throat.

Just the sight of it brought back the panic of trying to figure out what to tell him. Did she want to? Yes. Did she? No. No she said _"Not here."_ Did the regret sneak up on her from time to time when she thought of him and how lost he looked when he showed up at her dorm that night? Of course.

Not even her hurl-worthy regret could change moments long since past, however. Nothing would erase her words or his anger or his ejection from high school. She wished for years and years afterwards that it might, but she knew just the same that it couldn't.

Her keeping him at a distance was her anger with 2003 Jess and Rory for not trying to lay the groundwork for a 2004 Jess and Rory or a 2006 Jess and Rory.

Rory Gilmore felt like she had to keep some promise with herself, even if that meant shutting him out indefinitely. She could never have guessed that she'd unlock the door on her life to him at any point, and especially not now. Maybe the Subsect had been the key. Perhaps, all along, it was proof of his efforts and his devotion that she was looking for, no matter what avenue he chose to execute them in.

_And the bags are much too heavy_

_In my insecure condition_

_My pregnant mind is fat full with envy again_

Lorelai set the cup down as quietly as possible in front of her daughter, whose face had gone an even whiter shade of pale than a few minutes before when she stumbled out of the room and held her head onto her neck with great conscious effort.

"You're not looking so hot, babe," Lorelai said, squatting down to get a better look at her daughter who was breathing lightly and blinking slowly.

She bounced back from the memories far slower than the rate at which she fell into them, slowly blinking herself back into existing as she was in the moment, even if that meant a pounding headache and subhuman nausea.

She only nodded and lifted her head up far enough to draw a long drink from the cup, hoping it would calm the roll rippling in her stomach. Rory Gilmore even entertained the idea of throwing up in hopes that purging all the leftover wine and nothing would help, but she knew that it wasn't just the wine that was making her sick. It was the time he spent without her from 2003 to 2006. It was the way her imagination was running away with her down a very logical yet very scary path.

Jess Mariano was never one to twiddle his thumbs, especially when it came to her. As little as two months had passed between them without correspondence and he was already fucking the girl that worked at the cosmetics store. It didn't matter that she was rude or skanky or stupid or blonde. In fact, it made missing her a little easier. Rory even wondered how long that relationship with Shane would have lasted had she and Dean not broken up so fiercely that night. Wondered what she'd be like now if her mother had not insisted upon wearing vintage shoes and had not snapped the heel and had not demanded that they be fixed before she continued dancing.

But no. The path of her whole life did not dangle on that one night. She and Dean were done for anyway, and Jess would have been the obvious choice afterwards no matter what.

Three years? There was almost no telling what three years of nothing from her had held. She even attempted figuring it out mathematically by averaging the lengths of his relationships, figuring in the fact that he would mature and sometimes feel vindictive. Still, she never felt like she got the right estimate.

The number seemed to come out much lower than she imagined it would be. No number of years she had spent in Calculus or Advanced Placement Statistics could tell her about him more than her observations and intuition.

It was scary though, that her intuition had told her the number was more than five and definitely more than eight. Maybe even fifteen and, god forbid she even think it, twenty one.

Rory sat up and tried to get her blood flowing again, downing the rest of the coffee and refusing to be sickened further by her hangover or his immediate past. All she wanted was a shower and to talk to him once more before they both parted ways again and had to trust one another. What was there to trust right now? She trusted him when he said that he still loved her, but they weren't bound by a title or even small amounts of space. Everything was huge and wide open, just like the cut that he made in her heart when he left for California without saying goodbye.

She stood in the shower, too weak to raise her arms to her head to wash her hair. She let the water scald her back and run down her neck.

She imagined for a few seconds that the water was like his fingertips, gently caressing her body. But the water was not hot enough. His fingers burned her much more severely. Her skin would blister after their bodies disconnected and the only thing she could think to sooth it with were more of his touches or kisses on her ailing body.

Maybe it was twenty minutes. Maybe it was most of the day. She wasn't sure how long she was in there, exhausting her mother's hot water heater and easing her knotted muscles. Eventually she opened her eyes. Time was of the essence. Both of them were to return back to their respective corners tomorrow and she refused to sit out the sixteenth round.

_But I still love to wash in_

_Your old bathwater_

_Love to think that you couldn't love another_

_I can't help it…you're my kind of man_

"Hey stranger," Lorelai said as she stepped out onto their front porch and closed the door behind her, her arms crossed over her chest. She was still in her pajamas—Sunday clothes at the Gilmore's. Showered and made up notwithstanding, she was still as casual as flannel.

Jess looked up from the ground, his heart stopping for a moment. She sounded like Rory for a second there and he realized, with agony, that it had scared him that she was coming out of the house. He was scared shitless that he was just in this for the proximity, not the conversation.

But no. He refused to believe that.

"Lorelai," Jess said, giving her the smallest possible grin that was anything but jovial. It was painful.

"Watcha doing?" she asked, mischievous questioning in her narrowed blue eyes. Eyes that Jess knew she had given to her only daughter 21 years ago.

He took in a deep breath, feigning a lengthy explanation and maybe even a sigh, but instead all that came out was a difficultly expressed, "I don't know."

Lorelai pretended that she sort of got it. Rory still hadn't told her what had happened the other night when she left the house and inevitably went to meet him, but she was sure something had. Something that had dragged Jess to their house and Rory to the bottle. Probably it wasn't bad. But the communication between those two. It had never been good.

"I think I might," Lorelai said, trying to coax it out of him.

She moved for the door and Jess galvanized into action, on his feet before he knew it and reaching a hand out to her. A plea. An olive branch.

"Don't tell Rory I'm here. Just…don't." She nodded and went inside, closing the door behind her softly. He sat back on the porch and repressed a scream, messing up his hair in frustration with his idle fingers.

_Wanted and adored by attractive women_

_Bountiful selection at your discretion_

_I know I'm diving into my own destruction_

"Why did you just go outside?" Rory asked, coming out of her room.

She had on jeans and a nice shirt. Her hair was done. Makeup was date quality. Lorelai had the sneaking suspicion that she knew.

Maybe not outright. Maybe it was only intrinsic and intuitive. But Rory knew something. Something Lorelai hadn't picked up on all the way yet.

She stuttered for a second, her words snagging on her flannel pants and fuzzy socks. "I wanted to see if the paper came."

"We get the paper?"

"Luke does sometimes."

"Wouldn't he have picked it up on his way to work this morning?"

"Kirk delivers it. When we actually get it delivered is pretty arbitrary."

"So you were just checking for it?"

"Yup."

"Was it there?"

"No," Lorelai hesitated. Rory caught it immediately. Their rapport was too rapid-fire for her not to notice the half-second breach of habit.

"Mom?" she asked, drawing out the word, her face paling after having finally regained some color with her shower.

"No paper," Lorelai said, smiling a tiny bit. Rory looked stressed but Lorelai did not take back the grin. She smiled. She was happy.

Rory put on her shoes and walked out onto the porch without a jacket, probably swinging the door open louder than she would have normally.

Probably because she suspected that he was there already.

"Wh-wh-…," Rory said as she shut the door quietly behind her and went to sit beside him.

Close enough to touch. Far enough away to rule out their illicit kisses. Space would babysit them for now. Not Paris Gellar or her mother or Luke or Taylor.

Just space and prior knowledge.

"I can leave if you want," he said quickly. She cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"Don't. I'm glad you came. I just don't know why yet."

He wasn't cut by the comment. It was this Rory he had never seen before. Flustered and blunt and trying desperately to hold everything together. However, she had perfected the façade. He could only tell in her voice. The deepness, the quaver.

"Okay," he said quietly as he looked at her, speaking intimately and carefully. They were both determined to handle the situation like broken glass and neither was quite sure how well they were doing.

She took a breath to force down all of her accusations and rants. Numbers. Statistics that she had compiled about him and his relationships. She pushed it down into her stomach and forced it to stay put. Her face was pale with hangover and repression so much so that she doubted she surpassed bleached paper in coloring.

They both looked straight ahead for a while, breathing quietly so as to not draw attention to themselves.

"I opened your box last night."

"I paced behind the diner all night."

They had overlapped one another gracelessly yet again. Rory thought it felt like falling into his arms and Jess thought it felt like fate.

Silence pressed between them easily for a few moments as they both grinned sheepishly at one another, their minds racing in an attempt to recover from the stumble.

"Box?" he asked quietly.

"_All night_?" she asked, smiling at the incredulity, sure that it was an exaggeration.

"Well, until three or four."

"You're joking," she demanded, her face falling. He shook his head easily, his gaze never dropping from her eyes, though he desperately wanted to glance at her mouth as she took her bottom lip between her teeth and watch as the emotions sped across her face. "Wow," she said breathily.

"About that box…," he said, trying to casually allude and slip her mention back into the conversation.

The color rushed back into her face when he spoke again. He watched as her eyes clearly wanted to look other places. She held them on his face. Restraining herself.

"My mom dug it out of my old closet last night and left it on the kitchen table. She thought I might want to open it." He nodded and pleasant calmness took over his face. He was serene after all.

Rory jumped headfirst into phase two of her explanation, seeing that he had nothing more to say for now. She saw her lane and took it. She just hoped she didn't sound like a fool.

"I'm not sure why I didn't take it to college with me. I think it was because I was trying not to take you with me. You broke my heart when you called after graduation and I know I probably did nothing to help yours. I'm damn sure in fact." She paused, looking out onto the street. "It was the look in your eyes when you came back. When I had that awful haircut and didn't know what I wanted. It was the puppy eyes. That's how I knew I had broken your heart, too.

"Your box sat in my closet here for a long time. Next to Dean's. Completely defied Gilmore rules by setting things that clearly wouldn't get along beside each other. I think it was a time and proximity issue there. I just…shoved it up there and hoped that one day I could open it and reminisce and not want to puke. Not want to go and find you or that maybe I would even be able to figure out what happened.

"I guess what I'm trying to get at here in an extraordinarily existentialist manner is that I opened that box last night and downed my mom's emergency bottle of Arbor Mist and it made me remember for a second what it felt like to love someone totally. And after the fact, I pushed it aside because knowing that I had it hurt. It hurt so bad, Jess."

She had finally broken into sobs.

He envisioned himself reaching out and rubbing her back, reassuring her that he had recovered and that they could love again like that. That time would be kinder to them this time than last time. But he couldn't. It had already been too cruel.

_So why do we choose the boys that are naughty?_

_I don't fit in so why do you want me?_

_I know I can't change you, but I just keep trying_

For a minute or two neither said anything and she quietly sobbed on her front porch, looking out onto the morning. The sun was up. Birds were chirping. People were walking with dumbbells in their hands and ignoring the supernova on that porch.

"I'm not sure if what I left in Philadelphia is my past or not. All I know is that I'm here now, and that I've made mistakes lately.

"I came here on pure whim. My roommate actually spent a while trying to talk me out of it." He smiled and she gave a short laugh through her tears, though not yet looking up at him.

"It's not like I have real unfinished business there. Nothing I need to 'take care of.' But my life lately is there. The good and the bad."

"How many?" she asked, after slowly wiping the saline off of her face and looking at him stoically. He pulled his eyebrows together to beg the question and she continued to stare.

"How many what?" he asked, the door on his emotions slamming shut. She heard it now just like she did back then. Evenness of town, hardness of eyes, weakness in syllables. He was crazy if he thought she didn't know. Her eyes narrowed too.

"How many women, Jess?"

He hadn't been expecting it. He dropped his guard as if he had been struck in the back of the head while holding it precariously, like it was fragile.

"Rory, I don't think-," she cut him off.

"How many?" her voice was louder, but infinitely weaker. Her voice trembled like the skinny, virgin legs of a newborn calf and her eyes were always that of a doe's but blue.

He didn't answer her but gave her a pained look. She scoffed, her smile wry.

"That many, huh?" The devil was in her grin as she move to stand up.

His hand reached out and gripped at her arm as he stood up partially, finally reaching out and determined to hold on. Rory's hair whipped across her porcelain face as she turned to see what had held her from her retreat back into the house, tears bubbling up in her throat, pushed up by her accusation and feeling stupid.

"Please. You have to let me figure out how to do this for a second. I was patient with you just now. Please."

Jess Mariano had just pleaded with her twice, with his eyes wide and almost full of tears. His touch was hot with panic and the feverous need to explain. Her departure would ice him over and he was so sick of being cold.

This year, spring would mean more than tulips for him. He was determined.

"Fine," she said, sounding unwilling.

"It doesn't matter. And you don't want to know. I know you think you do, but we both know that you don't. And honestly, I don't want to tell you, because I refuse to ever see that look on your face again as long as I live. That look that means you think you caught me in a lie. I plan on looking at your face a lot for the rest of my life, but I don't plan on lying."

"Does anyone?" she asked bitterly, slicing through his apology easily.

"Yeah, I think so," he said, pushing himself up off of the porch and launching himself definitively in the direction of the diner.

"Did you?" she asked, calling out to him.

This time she would plea. How long they could play this game, nobody knew.

He turned, his eyes low but not yet to the ground, hands hanging at his side instead of defensively thrown into his pockets.

"I don't know. It was a long time ago. I think I always did. No matter how much I loved you." She nodded and stood to walk up to him.

'_Cause I love to wash in your old bathwater_

_Love to think that you couldn't love another_

_I'm on your list with all your other women_

_But I still love to wash in your old bathwater_

_You make me feel like I couldn't love another_

_I can't help it…you're my kind of man_

"I don't want to know. I'm scared. And I'm afraid to tell you about my life up until now because I'm scared that you'll run. I would run. I won't, but if I were you, I would," she explained, fourteen inches from his face.

"Take comfort in the fact that you're not alone."

Her face lightened when he said that and he smiled kindly, but timidly. There were some things that they could easily do, others that they couldn't.

Yelling, yes.

Smiling and laughing, no.

"I'm going back to Yale tomorrow." He nodded curtly.

"I have to get back to Philly sometime tomorrow afternoon, too."

They both wanted to sigh.

_Why do the good girls always want the bad boys?_

"So what now?"

He shrugged. "I've wondered that all weekend."

"I've never done this before. With you, I always wanted to. But I haven't."

"Me neither. I'm not big on reintroductions usually."

"I've noticed," she said, smiling fully for the first time, ironically.

He returned the smile and laughed a little at the sky. It finally seemed blue to him.

"C'mere," he said, gesturing with his head slightly and reaching out his arms slowly to wrap her between them.

This time there was not the impending explosion of her breakup with Logan to rest between their touches as he restrained her. There was nothing.

She burned like hell when he touched her, and she felt a small but important muscle just at the junction between her neck and back relax completely.

_So I pacify problems with kisses and cuddles_

_Diligently doubtful through all kinds of trouble_

_Then I find myself choking on all my contradictions_

As they slowly wove their limbs together, touching gently and reveling in the feelings and torrent of emotions, Jess came up with a game plan.

He was going to kiss her again, and he wanted her to know it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Rory almost moved to nestle her head in the space that he had fitted for her between his jaw and shoulder, but changed her mind when she found her lips eager for his.

This time would be their first time, when they told the story again to friends and children and grandchildren. Not on the gazebo or at Sookie's wedding or next to a gas pump at Gypsy's. This was it. Something made it more real. More all-consuming.

'_Cause I still love to wash in your old bathwater_

_Love to think that you couldn't love another_

_Share a toothbrush, you're my kind of man_

_But I still love to wash in your old bathwater_

_You make me feel like I couldn't love another_

_I can't help it…you're my kind of man_

On his first pass of her face, all he did was brush his lips past the delicate patch of skin right in front of her ear, dipping down just slightly blow on the spot below it. He heard her breath hitch in her chest and smiled.

Moving to the other side, he ran his lips, this time a little more firmly along her jawline, scraping his teeth gently against a vein in her exposed neck.

The breath that had gotten caught flew out swiftly as her eyes fluttered shut and her clutch on his jacket intensified.

He stayed measured, however, as he slowly released his hands from her sides and back, moving them to her face to cup her jaw while tilting her head just a little further.

Then he kissed her. Slow at first, barely touching. She moved toward him to add to it and he smiled against her mouth while she smiled against his, finally surrendering.

She sighed.

_No I can't help myself_

_I can't help myself_

_I still love to wash in your old bathwater_

**The next chapter is about halfway done, but I wanted to add something to this. Review and you get your update!! Happy New Year ).**


	11. Don't Go

**Story Title:** Falling Away With You

**Chapter Title:** Don't Go (Ivory, I love them SO much)

**Summary: **"Why do you care what they think anyway?" "Because you do."

**Notes:** Thanks to you ALL!! I think I'm getting back into the swing of this and am really excited to write more of this story. I've written and rewritten this chapter so many times trying to get it perfect. It's probably the one I've put the most hours into. **Note the rating!!**

OH! And I love pam halliwell )

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything in relation to Gilmore Girls, any of the staff, and particularly not any of the characters.

xxxxx

The diner went silent.

"Uh, hi," Luke stammered from behind the counter, his arms full of plates. Caesar immediately stopped filling the coffee mug that he was attending to in order to take in what rift in the flow had caused the quietude.

Nobody was really expecting them to be there.

"Hi," Jess said quietly, weaving his way through the tables awkwardly, his head down toward the floor as he made to be behind the counter. A lead barrier between him and the atomic energy that flowed from the town's gossip train. If he allowed the natural sag of his spine to overcome him, he could almost protect himself from all of it. He stood awkwardly beside Luke, passing his eyes between his uncle and Rory, who was still standing in the doorway, her arms wrapped around herself and her eyes wide with unknowing.

"What are all of you looking at? As you were," Luke grumbled as he began moving again, setting the plates he had down onto their respective tables with a series of echoing bangs, reminiscent of breaking the sound barrier.

Slowly the quiet chattering resumed, still laying several decibels below the volume at which the silence had blared. The stares switching between the two figures began to fall away, but Rory still felt a few pairs of eyes as she awkwardly walked to the counter, standing on the other side across from Jess.

Their eyes met briefly before they looked in opposite directions, shooting their eyes to the walls and windows instead.

"What are the two of you doing here?" Luke asked quietly as he came up to Jess behind the counter. "You didn't figure that there would be people here on a Sunday morning? I know you're not that dense."

"We're going upstairs," Jess answered quickly, not meeting his eyes. "This is the only way up. At least the easiest."

Luke's eyebrows shot up his forehead, pushing back his hat further on his head. "Really." One word. No one was sure if it was a question or a dare.

"I'll be down in a little bit, if you need my help," Jess offered, still talking to the linoleum behind the counter, chipped in places from too many dropped plates and the roughness of work boots. Much like their lives.

"Do what you gotta do," Luke said as he took one last look at the two of them, offering a sort of kindness to Rory with his eyes as he went back to what he was doing. Rory looked at the top of Jess's head for a few seconds, wondering when he would be able to look her in the eye again.

He lifted his head slowly, like it was too heavy to do naturally. As if he couldn't hold it there for very long, his eyes and hers right at the same place. Nobody looked up or down. It was just as it was. Perfect and even.

"Let's go," he said, turning and disappearing behind the curtain. She followed him, taking a quick sweep of the diner to make sure that not too many people were staring as she lifted the sheet to disappear behind it. Only a few had caught the movement and she let out a little, hot breath as she pulled it fully aside and made her way up the stairs, a few steps behind him.

"I hate this place," he said once they were behind the door. One hand was in his hair and the other was resting on hip, cradling the curve of the waistband of his jeans. His muscles were tense and woven in a way that showed his frustration in so many manners of evil.

_I'm sure by now_

_You have found_

_Another way out of this town_

"They're known for making bad situations worse," Rory added, her arms still around her own waist, trying to agree with him. She immediately regretted the quip when she saw him look over to her, his eyes still hard.

"Is this a bad situation?" he accused, daring her a little.

"I think going in there together was the bad situation that they made worse by dropping their jaws along with their silverware," she said, smoothly covering herself. Two years of beautifully constructed lies being volleyed between Logan and herself had taught her how to back out slowly.

But reverse only takes you one way.

"That's what I can't stand!" he said, close to yelling. "I'm _still_ a hoodlum to them. I own a fucking bookstore and I'm the antichrist! You and I being together is like Lucifer taking the Virgin for sloppy seconds and it makes me _insane_!"

"Why do you care what they think anyway?" he said back at him, riding the brink between yelling and scolding.

"Because you do." He had been so agile with the change in tone, so immediate with the cyanide in his glare that Rory's heart stopped for at least ten seconds while they locked eyes.

"No, no I don't," she stumbled, trying to force them back at him, but failing. The arrow fell at his feet instead. His smirk grew but his gaze never dropped the death it promised.

"Of course you do. Your mother, Luke, everyone. You care about all of them. As a side effect, you inevitably care what they think."

"Luke and my mom are not this town, Jess. What is wrong with you?" she asked as he turned around and shook his head, moving for the other side of the room. The side that had once upon a time been his. He laid a hand on a shelf where his books and CD's had taken up so long ago and rested his forehead against his arm.

"It doesn't matter if my intentions are good. It doesn't matter if I'm not the same. I'm just never gonna be good enough," he said, laughing some. Rory slowly moved across the room to be closer to him.

"I might have cared what they thought three years ago when you were still a delinquent and a screw up and awful to me. But now why should I? And doesn't what I think count for anything?" she screeched at him, only two feet from his side, a hand gesturing in the space to her side, toward the far wall.

"Rory-," he said, though interrupted, anger behind the word.

"No, seriously Jess. Even if they do think that, which they probably do, I don't think that about you. Yes, I remember our relationship in high school, and I am painfully wary of this one because of it. Don't look at me like that," she said as he turned his head to expose one hurt looking eye. "It's my prerogative to be hesitant. But you never showed them the good, Jess. You were so adamant about only letting them see the bad. Do you seriously wonder why they think like this?"

He was silent, breathing slowly and staring at the floor as she, eyes wide, kept hers trained on him. She dropped her arm as a sign of retreat and moved for the door, hands in her hair.

"Fine. Whatever. I'll see you in the spring," she said, sounding bitter.

He panicked. It felt like someone had wrapped their hand around his heart and squeezed tight, pinning him against a wall so that he could hardly breathe.

"Rory," he forced out of his throat, sounding high-pitched and pathetic as she turned angrily toward him, her hair twirling around her neck and shoulders like she was spinning underwater, floating through the dense serenity in slow motion, watching him with eyes that disappeared in all the blue.

"What?" she cried out, tears hot and fresh in her eyes, balancing on the edge of the lid, threatening to take their swan dive onto her cheeks.

The hand gripped tighter and he knew he was fighting for air, as he stood all the way up now, no longer supporting himself against the shelves, though the oxygen deprivation threatened to send him spiraling for the floor anyway.

Their fights were always heady with tension; the years of pent up sex and urges and touches that were never forged into reality, only existing in the fourth dimension where all things imagined were real. For all the years he had dreamt of ripping off her muslin, blue dress that she wore one night to dinner with her grandparents and all the nights she had spent with her hands clasped on her stomach, staring tremulously at the ceiling and wondering about that pooling of heat.

Both constantly got the guess right when trying to find out why the other was always so hard, so brash with them. It was the sex. The tight sinew of their muscles tightening even further in restraint and never being calmed by anyone else.

He gripped hard on reality, air pushing into his lungs like the elixir of life and he held up a hand, just to show her how it shook.

"You know you do this to me. I've already told you. We have to find some middle ground, Rory. I'm having trouble keeping it together."

"I've noticed," she tossed at him, a sharp edge to her words.

"This can't be like last time. You can't just break up with him and I can't come to the rescue. This isn't Dean."

"This isn't Dean," she mimicked.

"Now what?" As if the question hadn't been asked countless times that weekend.

They were done talking for now. No more stumbled answers. Their words kept containing infallible loopholes.

Their hands and bodies didn't. No more lies. No more meaningful silence.

She stepped forward, sure of herself and he watched her in awe, her eyes clouded over. He felt her fingers curl into his t shirt as she hauled him closer to her and screwed her eyes shut, kissing him hard with total abandon. He, not sure that is wasn't just an elaborate hallucination, hesitated to close his eyes or lift his arms from his sides, to reciprocate the eagerness and panic in her hands.

Finally he reached up and held her by her arms, pushing them closer together, as his arms circled to her back, her hands pinned between their chests. He pulled her so close to him that her feet lifted just barely off the ground and he set her back down, never relaxing the pressure of his lips against hers, bruising them. Claiming them.

Rory managed to free one of her hands and snaked it up his neck, shaking as she touched his skin that felt like coals beneath her fingers and wove them into his hair, pulling back slightly to coax his mouth open, stumbling for something to support themselves against.

His knees were just that close to buckling and her insides were rapidly becoming lava.

Their tongues danced together skillfully as Rory's back collided fiercely with the wall beside his old bookshelf, five feet from the bed.

But that was too easy.

_Auburn scarf round your neck_

_Winter night with feet so wet_

_Envelopes, letters sent_

_Times we laughed and danced in step_

Pushing up and against her body as he poured himself into their kiss, Jess let go of her back and moved to her stomach, shoving his hands underneath her thin shirt so he could feel the skin; feel where they had left off.

Fingertips grazed the bottom of her breasts and she moaned loudly into his mouth, part of it escaping as they seized frantic and erratic breaths. Her hands clawed as his shoulders, her nails modestly manicured and painted a muted nude, buffed to shine like a doll's.

When both were completely out of breath, Rory let her head fall back as far as it would go, trying to memorize the burn as they touched and the pace at which they were working.

Jess only panted for a moment or two, allowing his lips a temporary liberation from her skin before he reattached, this time to her neck, biting her along the line of her jaw and leaving a trail of wet kisses along her collarbone. Her chest heaved underneath his hands as she tried to drink in the air and some semblance of reality. Hadn't they just gotten done screaming at one another? Wasn't this Jess?

It was them. So, so them.

Rory scratched at the fabric of his t shirt frantically, finally reaching down and sliding her hands under the thin, overwashed cotton, pulling it up as she moved her hands to his shoulder blades where she hoped she could seek comfort in their solidarity.

Goose bumps emerged all over his feverish skin as she exposed his back to the rest of the room and the tingles all over his body did nothing for his current condition. His resolve to maintain decorum washing away like sidewalk chalk during a thunderstorm, he moved down and kissed her stomach, right below her belly button as he slowly moved her shirt northward, over her head and down to the wood floor.

Kissing his way back up, Jess caressed every area he had not yet been privy to. Burning it with his skin so that everyone would know he had been there. This place, under her clothes and delicate, was his until they healed.

Hopefully, he would never give her that chance.

When he made his way back to her face, her eyes were hazy and her hair was mussed, strewn over her face and her shoulders. Auburn against ivory like poetry and coffee. She smiled at him in the smallest way she could muster as he slammed his lips against hers again, the very tips of his fingers starting to move beyond the waistband of her jeans, right above where her bottom sat, crushed against the wall.

Her hands were everywhere as he slipped his tongue into her mouth again. Chest, stomach, back, shoulders, hair. Jess's skin was flushed and freezing at the same time and it couldn't be said that he wasn't in major need of clothing removal.

Rory's eyes fluttered open as he eased his hands off of her back and pulled her from the wall slightly so he could peal his shirt off of his skin.

The navy lace of her bra scratched his now bare chest as they returned to the matter at hand, attacking one another with their lips and making small, anxious noises. His hand moved up to cup her still concealed breast while the other squeezed her waist gently, his hands shaking in restraint.

He wanted to squeeze. Just to make sure that she was real and wouldn't slip through his fingers like she did in his dreams when he pulled her just a little too close or hugged her too tightly.

When she pushed her hips against his quickly and fiercely, wiggling some to ease the dull ache in her pelvis because he hadn't dared venture there yet, he didn't need to squeeze.

He pushed her against the wall again, their hips meeting with a muted thud and groan from each of their throats.

Rory reached down and busied herself with the fly of his jeans, eager to disrobe him further. Their closeness made the task at hand infinitely more difficult, but neither knew how to disconnect. How to let go of the closeness. It was just too much.

Jess ravished her neck and the swell of her breast as his hands fumbled for the clasp in the back, a feeling he hadn't ever known. Jess had crafty hands that never faltered when it came to the eyehooks. Pinch, release, slide. As simple as snapping.

She slid her shoulder blades around a little to allow him better access to the space between, both pushing her breast harder against his mouth and allowing the clasp to snap open. The fabric slackened its hold on her body immediately and she sighed, running her fingers through his hair until it was untidy and tangled.

Standing from the slouch he had taken on to be nearer to her body, Jess stood to full height and slid the fabric off of her small and pale shoulders, dancing his fingertips lightly over the spattering of freckles and the nonexistent tan line that he imagined her with in a few months.

When they were in California. Together.

It would be a white strip that curved up over her clavicle and looped around her neck, just like Route 66 around the Bible Belt, her sun-tanned skin the color of corn stalks in late August and it would smell just like ripened wheat mixed with a little bit of honeysuckle. That was how it smelled one day, on his way back from California, when Jess pried open the window on the bus. Wheat and honeysuckle.

_Don't go quite yet_

_Don't leave this love that we have had_

Rory let out a breathy little sigh when she managed to unhook his belt and slide his jeans down the rest of his body, and moved to his neck, kissing here, nibbling there while his hands continued to assault her body. She reeled when she felt his stubble brush against her soft cheek, her lips.

The burn, unlike he had earlier predicted, was just right.

Hastiness overcame the both of them when Rory raked her teeth over the artery in his neck and ran her fingertips dangerously along the waistband of his boxers, hanging just a little lower than normal.

He wedged his knees between hers and took another half a step forward, hitting a place between her thighs that made the world go black for three seconds while he smirked at her and anything but casually caressed the sides of her breasts, enjoying the feel of her flushed skin against him.

Rory moaned outwardly when she felt his muscles ripple against her hypersensitive stomach while he took a breath he had long deprived himself of. She flicked her eyes onto his and saw the mind-blowing clarity.

In a second her pants were off and her panties were floating toward the floor, pooling around her feet. She stepped out of them and kicked them aside while her hands fumbled with his boxers, pulling them down indelicately. Jess groaned when her hands brushed against him and made to say something when she straightened herself up and pressed her fingers to his lips, shaking her head gravely.

Words were too messy right now. He knew it in the shake of her head. It was so much easier to read her body than just her lips.

He smiled at her warmly as she refused to remove her finger. Jess kissed it gently, slowly guiding it into his mouth while her face turned red, becoming aware of her nudity while he kept his eyes trained on hers and his hands on her breasts.

She slowly removed her finger and he sucked on it slowly as she pulled it from his mouth, from between his swollen lips, replacing the empty space in front of his smirk with her own kiss, hard and full of passion.

Rory Gilmore was ready this time. She just hoped he knew it.

Blindly, Jess reached into his old dresser and pulled out a condom, putting it on while never breaking their kiss. Rory let her head fall back, pushing her body harder against his, no longer able to wait for his touch to arrive.

For a moment he moved from her lips to look at her as she stood there, barely able to hold herself up. She was so much more beautiful now than he had ever imagined her against his pillow in Philadelphia. Something about the moment, however silent, was exceedingly more striking than his imagination.

All it took was one pleading look from her eyes and Jess was lifting her leg, wrapping it around his waist and losing himself in the kiss as he entered her for the first time. The noise she made when her back collided with the wall again was almost a symphony.

Her throat began to close up and everything became gauzy as she moved close to the edge, while Jess kissed and licked her neck and jaw line. The noises she managed to make only drove him wilder, causing him to push harder and deeper from one movement to the next. And then there it was, like breaking the surface of the water and tasting clean oxygen after a lengthy submersion, she was there, right there with him close behind.

_I can't forget that night before you left_

_I tried not to listen_

_Come on it's not time yet_

_But if you have to leave I'll still be here waiting_

They were still resting against each other, willing their heartbeats to regulate.

Rory caught sight of their clothes on the floor and then glanced at the clock radio on his old nightstand.

Where he would sometimes let rest the books of hers that he was borrowing and putting notes into. Her heart dropped a little at the thought.

"It's getting late," she whispered against his neck, her arms draped over his shoulders like limp and pale tree branches. He squeezed her to himself.

"What time is it?" he inquired further, his voice like sandpaper from lack of use.

"After one." She paused to keep from choking on her next words. "I need to go back early and move the rest of my stuff out." She went completely still against his body and he nodded into her neck.

"Okay," he croaked out.

"I don't want to go," he rationalized. Perhaps to him, but mostly just to hear herself say it.

"I don't want you to go, either," he returned, even quieter.

"I'm going to miss you," she said, tears starting to fill her eyes but not falling down her cheeks and onto his shoulder. He nodded in response, feeling too weak to speak. "Am I going to see you again soon?" she asked, pulling away and wiping her eyes so she could see his face.

He looked down onto her perfect skin and felt the promise falling from his lips. "Next weekend. Come to Philadelphia." He paused as her eyes widened like a camera iris. "Come to Truncheon and see it before the party." His enthusiasm piqued. "Come and meet my roommate and- and come see where I wrote The Subsect."

She laughed at his childish zeal and he smiled at her brightly before softening again.

"You have a roommate?" she said, still laughing. He nodded, quietly laughing. "Who?"

Rory made sure to be ambiguous and not look like she was going to be too hurt to hear it was a girl.

"_His_ name is Nick. He's…protective." Rory flushed pink and then laughed, looking down. "I thought I already told you that I haven't dated much since I left town. What made you think I had a female roommate?" He had let her go finally and they were slowly replacing their clothing.

"Have you seen my—oh, thank you," she said as he passed her the navy lace bra he had tossed aside. "Um, I don't know. I didn't want to be too assumptive, I guess."

As he buttoned and zipped his jeans, he reached out and grabbed her arm as she went to grab her shirt. She dropped it back onto the floor and fell into his kiss, his half-naked embrace.

"Come to Philadelphia," he said again, whispering it in her ear. He repeated himself like a mantra over and over again, indirectly praying that she agree. She giggled and kissed the tip of his nose.

"I'll be there, Friday night." He smiled at her and kissed her again, holding her close to him.

"Don't go," he pleaded against her throat.

"I don't want to," she said again, her mind clouding.

"Then don't."

"I have to," she said, blowing out a sigh and moving away from him so she could put on the rest of her clothes. Jess joined her and when they were done, they stood looking at each other, realizing how different things had become. How they would never be able to go back to how things had been earlier that morning.

Wordlessly they linked hands and moved out of the apartment, down the stairs, and through the diner doors, despite the silence that mirrored when they entered the first time. Outside, in the blind spot of the two large windows on the diner, they loosely held each other.

"Call me when you get settled at Paris'," he said, looking down woefully. She nodded.

"When are you leaving?"

"In an hour or so. It's kind of a haul."

She bit her bottom lip and this time he looked, taking small pleasures where he could get them. "I'll call you later in the week for directions." He nodded, unlocking his eyes from her mouth.

With one last kiss, she started her walk back to her mother's house, for the first time since he had seen her, walking with her head up and her arms swinging whimsically.

She ran her fingers through her hair and pushed out a breath, then turned to look at him as he stood, his arms over his chest.

For the first time in her life, he looked like man. Like the man she loved. Short hair, toned arms, legs crossed at the ankles, arms over his chest, leaning against the bricks.

She was going, and promised herself that as soon as she was out of his sight, she was doing a little excited, high school girl dance, squealing at the wallpaper and the mirror of her bedroom.

Rory Gilmore was electrified.

xxx

Jess walked back into the diner, hiking his eyebrows up his forehead at the gawkers who had turned at the sound of the bell, looking to see if Rory was anywhere to be seen.

Luke returned the raised eyebrows and set down the carafe he had been toting.

"Well?" he asked, sounding less-than patient.

"Later. You need help?"

"Jess-."

"You've only got me for another hour," he reminded him, opening his arms as an offer. Luke narrowed his eyes at him.

"You help me for forty-five minutes. I get fifteen alone with you."

"Kind of forward, don't you think?" Jess joked as he picked up the carafe from where Luke had left it and filled Kirk's mug. He watched him open his mouth and put up a hand. "Don't want to hear it."

Luke smiled knowingly.

_How loud I can hear you color in my…_

_How loud I can hear this silence ringing in my ear._

**A/N—I know! Really long! But the next chapter we get to see Nick squabble with Rory about Jess, and maybe some snippets from the talk Luke and Jess are going to have!**


	12. See You When I Get There

**Story Title**: Falling Away With You

**Chapter Title**: See You When I Get There (The Wallflowers, my absolute FAVORITE)

**Summary**: Literati. "So I was just sitting her packing and was thinking about you and this weekend and thought I'd give you another call to tell you how excited I am and how happy I am that you asked me to come," she said, the phone cradled on her shoulder as she folded up what she had bought that afternoon.

**Notes**: In case I haven't said this to all of you already, I love you all and thank you a million billion times for your feedback. This chapter is going to go back and forth a little, but I'll italicize what's in the 'past'.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Gilmore Girls or the rights to use these characters. I'm just borrowing and I'll put them back where I found them when I'm finished.

"_All right, spill."_

"_Spill what? My water?" Jess asked, sarcasm lingering on his lips._

"_You know what I mean," Luke said slowly, his arms over his chest and his face all hard planes. "What happened up here with Rory?"_

"_You seem to have an idea. You tell me."_

"_I pray to God that I'm wrong, for your sake alone."_

"Tell me what I did to her_," Jess said, emphasizing the phrase, though a smile was tugging at his features mercilessly. Luke was coming undone with every passing second._

"_No, you tell me. I wasn't up here."_

"_Probably a good thing."_

"_Jess! See, when you say stuff like that, I have a really hard time defending you!"_

"_I don't need you to defend me," Jess said, a laugh creeping out._

"_This is anything _but_ funny." He paused to collect himself. "Did you have sex with Rory up here?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Jess! What am I supposed to tell Lorelai?" he demanded, frantic. His face was morphing into a deep shade of purple as he spoke, the veins in his arms bulging under his skin. Jess smirked at the floor._

"_Well, don't go into detail or anything."_

"_She's going to lose her mind," Luke said, at a loss. _

"_Has it occurred to you yet that maybe Rory told her already?"_

"_No. I would've gotten that phone call by now."_

"_I'm not your responsibility anymore, remember? Rory and I are both adults. Consenting adults, might I add. _Very _consenting."_

"_D'you mind?"_

"_You wanted to know what happened. And you told me that this was my problem, from now on. You told me to go talk to her or something. I opted for both." The color in Luke's face ramped up a shade._

"_I did not mean have sex with her in my apartment."_

"_We didn't do it on the bed or anything, we did it-,"_

"_Enough! I've heard enough!" Luke paused as Jess laughed at him a little. "You know what? I'm going to pretend I never heard a word of this. I'm going to go back downstairs while you pack your things, and we are going to act like this _never happened._ You wanna know why? Because my fiancée is going to freak out on me because you had," he lowered his voice below a whisper, "sex with her daughter in my apartment!"_

"_Rory's going to tell her," Jess singsonged as Luke opened the door. Turning around once to watch as he lifted his duffel off of the floor, Luke gave one narrow eyed glare at his back before slamming the door behind him._

_I'm looking up at the moving clouds_

_Well they hit so hard this time_

_I just might stay down_

"Paris!" Rory yelled from her bedroom, rummaging through her dresser.

"What?" she snapped as she entered the room, a ladle in hand. Rory looked up at her quizzically.

"What's with the ladle?" Paris looked down at her hand and back to her roommate.

"Bugs."

"You were going to drown them in soup?" Rory asked, a mocking tone to her voice. Paris looked at her firmly.

"I don't like to kill them with my shoes because I don't particularly enjoy the notion of walking around with bug intestine on my shoes."

"But you'll kill them with kitchen utensils that touch our food?" Rory asked, her voice almost shrill, her noise wrinkled.

"Well, I don't use this ladle."

"Doesn't it seem more logical to use something with a flat side and not rounded…" Rory trailed off.

"You do it your way, I do it mine."

"Kay."

"Why did you call me?" Paris asked, crossing her arms, the ladle hitting the door as she did so.

"Have you seen my gray sweater?" Rory asked, her eyebrows furrowed. Paris looked Rory up and down once.

"Are you insinuating that all of this," she said, motioning up and down her body, "could be contained by clothes that hug your whole ninety-eight pounds? I think not."

"Well, I'm trying to ignore the fact that if it's not here and it's not at home, that it's still at Logan's."

"Your mom doesn't have it?" Paris asked.

Rory sighed. "She said no, which usually means yes. But I don't think I've brought it home before." She moved back to the drawer and continued to paw through it. "It probably accidentally ended up in his dresser or something. He's really bad at sorting laundry," she said, angrily shuffling her clothes around and then slamming the drawer shut roughly. "I'm okay," she said, collecting herself.

"Do you want me to go and get it for you?" Paris offered, sounding a little afraid.

"No need," Rory said, smiling. "He can keep it. I'm going shopping. You want to, you know, put the ladle down and come with me?"

"So I can watch you timidly wander in and out of Victoria's Secret for your coital weekend with the prodigal nephew? I'll pass."

"Paris, I'm going to replace my sweater."

Paris sighed and uncrossed her arms. "I would, but I have things to do today." Rory grinned at her and went back to packing as she began to leave the room.

"Happy hunting."

_Now if you were me I would come back to get you_

_If this is love then I don't remember_

_You won't find anyone to treat you better_

_We've already been through hell and high waters_

"Stop fucking cleaning," Nick said as he sat on the tattered leather couch in their living room.

"This place is a mess," Jess said as he picked up empty soda cans and discarded them into the trash can, candy wrappers and loose leaf paper joining in the mix.

"You've been at this for thirty six hours. You're making me look lazy," Nick said as he drew a long drink from his beer and cracked his neck.

"It wasn't hard," Jess mumbled as he went into the other room for Windex and a paper towel.

"Aw come on Mariano! Do you think she's going to notice if the windows aren't spotless? She can't be that particular," Nick said.

From the moment Jess had returned from Star's Hollow that Sunday night, Nick knew what had happened. The look in his eye and the languid movement of his limbs told him all he needed to know.

"_Did you at least sleep with her and get your money's worth on gas?" Nick asked, flipping channels on the couch and refusing to look Jess in the eye. Jess looked at him once, somewhat taken aback. He closed the door behind him and hiked his bag higher up on his shoulder, sliding his car keys across the end table. _

"_What the fuck is your problem?" he wondered as he walked in front of the television to head into his bedroom, tossing his duffel bag onto the bed. He heard the TV click off and the springs on the couch exhale a sigh of relief when Nick removed his slight body from the frame. _

_Leaning against the doorway, he crossed his arms against his chest and watched as his roommate, a smile teased on his crooked lips, unpacked his clothes and contentedly folded them. _

"_Well?" Nick wondered, feeling abandoned. _

"_Hmm?" Jess said, not quite hearing him._

"_Was it worth it?" Nick asked, his eyes hard._

_Jess stopped what he was doing and ran a hand through his hair, nervously laughing and then stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Yeah. Yeah it was worth it." Nick appraised him once more and then went back out into the living room, resuming his old position on the couch, in front of the indigo glow of the television screen._

_Leaving his room and walking into the kitchen, Jess reached into the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. He threw himself into the empty space on the couch beside Nick and cracked the bottle open. Silence followed._

"_She's coming this weekend," he said on a sigh, taking the remote control from his roommate's limp hand and navigating away from _Home Improvement

"_Is that right?" Nick asked, his annoyance beginning to rise in his throat._

"_Yup," Jess said, turning to look at him, wondering why he was so upset._

"_So what?" He asked, after a brief period of silence. "It's all happily ever after and shit now? That doesn't really sound too much like you."_

_Jess laughed wryly. "I don't have to explain this to you. It was anything but happily ever after. You'll know when you meet her."_

"_She's _staying_?" he said, finally turning to look at Jess, his head cocked and eyes wide. Jess nodded._

"_Yeah. And you won't be a prick to her like you've been to me since I got home."_

Over the buzz and whine of their outdated vacuum cleaner, Nick heard from Jess's room the distinctive sound of his cell phone chirping on his nightstand.

"Jess!" he attempted to yell at him as he watched Jess attempt to untangle the cord from his ankles and simultaneously suck up cracker crumbs.

"What?" he yelled back, the noise just barely breaking through. Nick pointed to his room and made a phone with his hand which he put to his head.

"Shit," Jess swore as he awkwardly unplugged the appliance and rushed into his bedroom, hoping that he hadn't missed the call.

"Hello?" he asked, short of breath. Rory smiled on the other line.

"What? Did I catch you at a bad time?" she asked. Jess smiled, reassured when he heard her voice.

"I was just cleaning," he said sheepishly as he went to sit down at his desk, pushing aside invoices and manuscripts.

Rory sighed audibly. "I told you to stop that. It's not like I'm going to judge you based on how clean your apartment is."

"My roommate is a pig," Jess said loud enough for Nick to hear.

"Well, surely he hasn't dirtied your room. I don't plan on leaving there too often," she said, her voice dropping a seductive octave. Jess almost blushed but instead just smiled shyly, blinking a few times.

"Can I finish vacuuming at least?"

"That eager to get me off the phone?"

"I meant later."

"Sure. But that's it."

"Huh."

"So I was just sitting her packing and was thinking about you and this weekend and thought I'd give you another call to tell you how excited I am and how happy I am that you asked me to come," she said, the phone cradled on her shoulder as she folded up what she had bought that afternoon.

"If you finish that with a 'but something came up and I'm not going to make it,' I might cry."

"Oh really?" Rory asked, teasing him.

"We're talking full on weeping."

"See then I would be forced to come just to witness the weeping," she said, a logical joking quality to her voice.

"You just can't stay away," he said, smiling wide. She laughed at him in agreement.

"At any rate, I should probably get back to packing, so I will see you tomorrow afternoon," she said, looking at her bag and wondering how she was going to zip it shut.

"You get my directions?" he asked, standing from his desk and moving into the next room.

"Yep. I should be by about four. Are you going to be around or should I go to the bookstore?"

"I should be around." They said their goodbyes and Jess snapped his phone shut, to find Nick wrestling the vacuum back into the hall closet.

"I wasn't done with that!" Jess exclaimed. With one more knock with his shoulder, Nick slammed the door shut and wiped his hands on his pants.

"It's possessed. And this is an intervention. No more cleaning. Get your shit. I'm taking you out."

"I still have stuff to do!" he whined as Nick pushed him back into his bedroom, found his wallet, and stuffed it in Jess's pocket.

"Drinking. You have drinking to do."

_I ain't sorry baby, don't think that_

_We ain't done anything that I take back_

_Now go on pretend that you ain't changed_

_And don't worry about me baby_

_See you when I get there_

"_So?" Lorelai asked as Rory entered the house, grinning uncontrollably. "This is the best mood I've seen you in all weekend. What gives?"_

"_Hmm?" Rory asked as she shut the door behind her and wandered into her bedroom. Lorelai trailed after her questioningly. _

"_Ahhhhh. I see." Lorelai sat down on the edge of Rory's bed as she fixed her hair at the vanity bench. "You slept with him." Lorelai shook her head, a weird smile on her face. _

"_Mom!" she exclaimed, spinning around to look at her, aghast._

"_I can't believe you slept with him! You've only been gone a little while! And weren't you arguing on the porch?" Lorelai's voice wasn't angry. It wasn't even strange. It was curious._

"_Geez!" she said, standing up and moving to her suitcase, putting back all she had unpacked. _

"_How was it?" Lorelai screamed giddily. Rory flushed crimson. _

"_Mom."_

"_I'm serious! Back in high school you promised me that you would tell me when it happened. And since you didn't, I at least deserve the details." Rory turned to look at her and crossed her arms. _

"_This is still sort of awkward! Especially since he just showed up out of the blue! It's not like we were able to really talk about it or anything." Lorelai yawned._

"_Lame!"_

"_What more could you want to know?"_

"_How about where?" Lorelai said, resting her chin in her hands, her elbows propped up on her knees. Rory stared her down, hoping she'd let it go. _

"_The apartment over the diner," she mumbled quickly under her breath. _

"_Oooh kinky. It's usually really busy on Sundays." Rory laughed uncomfortably as she went back to packing up her makeup. Lorelai thought for a moment in the silence, then wrinkled her nose. "Wait, where in the apartment? Because I don't particularly like the notion of you and I having slept with men in the same bed."_

"_Don't worry. We didn't," Rory responded, becoming mischievous. _

_Though she tried desperately to find it funny, Lorelai couldn't help the bad taste in her mouth. "Yup, this is awkward. Carry on," she said, standing up and leaving the room. _

_Rory smiled at her reflection and then stood up, closing her door quietly. Making sure that she was alone, Rory slowly raised her arms up and did a silent cheer, pumping her fists into the air triumphantly. _

_I'm looking up at the moving clouds_

_Well they're down so long _

_But I still think you might come around_

Jess packed his cigarettes firmly against the inside of his wrist as he sat across from Nick at the bar down the road from their apartment, a drink in front of both of them. As he pulled the plastic off of the box, a leggy blonde too much eye makeup on caught his eye, smiling at him with her big, fake white teeth. Jess turned his attention back to Nick as he lit one.

"Here we go again," he sighed, the smoke curling out of his mouth.

"This is ridiculous. I remember now why I don't go out with you that often."

"She can tell I'm not available. I didn't smile at her when she walked by the first time."

"This is sad. It's like the end of an era!" Nick exclaimed as he signaled their waitress back over.

"The era that you're referring to did not involve me picking up blondes at Mike's, Nick," Jess said as Giovanna came back to their table, resting her hands on the varnished wood.

"Nah, you had a thing for brunettes," she said, smiling at them both. "How are my two favorite boys today? Unwinding before the big open house tomorrow?" she asked, squatting to see them better. Jess smiled at her kindly.

"Something like that," he said, glaring lightly at Nick.

"He wouldn't quit cleaning."

"The bookstore?"

"The apartment." Gio looked taken aback.

"Since when do you guys clean the apartment?" she wondered, looking between the two.

Nick and Jess had met Giovanna when they moved into their apartment and went out the first night for a drink. Originally Nick had tried mercilessly to get her into bed, and after a night of heavy drinking, he realized that she wasn't going home with him. Ever since they had all become quick friends.

Nick gestured towards Jess with his neck. "His woman is staying with us this weekend and she's never seen the apartment before." Gio's eyes jumped up her forehead immediately.

"Your woman? Do tell," she said, settling in to hear the story. The bar wasn't moving that quickly for a Thursday, but she still glanced around to make sure that everyone's drinks were still full.

Nick brought his glass to his lips and swallowed. "She's from Connecticut."

"I dated her in high school for a year. She kind of came back into my life."

"Do I get to meet little Miss Connecticut?" Gio asked, smiling brightly. Jess grinned at her and blushed.

"Yeah, I might bring her down here after the open house."

"When did you start seeing her? I've never heard of her before," she observed, looking between the two.

"'Bout ten minutes ago," Nick joked. Jess looked at him hard.

"I went to see her last weekend and she agreed to come and see it and stay with me. End of story. Can we talk about something else now?" he demanded. Gio laughed and stood up.

"I've gotta get back to work. I'll see you two tomorrow," she said as she left. They both called their goodbyes to her.

"Miss?" a woman asked Gio, tapping on her shoulder gently as she moved back to the bar. She turned around, her short brown hair moving slightly with the motion, looking at the blonde inquisitively.

"What can I do for you?" she asked. The blonde looked back over her shoulder to where Nick and Jess were having an animated conversation.

"Does the man in the green you were just talking to have a girlfriend?" she asked shyly. Gio smiled as she looked at the back of Jess's head, watching him bring his cigarette to his lips.

"I'm sorry, he does," she said, turning around and going back to the bar. Deflated, the blonde went back to her table, not glancing over at him this time.

_Now I'm making plans for when you feel better_

_You might just want someone more familiar_

_You won't find anyone else to take you back_

_Now sometimes you're an angel but you're usually a pain in the ass_

"_Please tell me that you've been working on that coffee pipeline under the ground between the diner and the house," Lorelai said as a greeting when Luke answered the phone in the diner. They were experiencing a brief lull and he leaned against the counter to talk to her._

"_That would require a lot of equipment."_

"_How about an aquaduct?" she suggested. "That way you wouldn't have to tear up the ground and it would look really cool."_

"_Did you call me with a purpose?" he asked, even though he was grinning. _

"_Is Jess still there?" she asked, quieter now. Luke sighed._

"_He just left." The silence that Luke let press was tense. "Did she tell you what happened?" he timidly wondered. Lorelai smirked at him._

"_Yeah she did."_

"_I swear, if I thought that there was _anything_ I could've done, I would've." Lorelai laughed at him._

"_Luke, it's not a big deal. They're adults. I saw this coming. I've seen this coming since she was seventeen. It's about time." Luke looked shocked._

"_You're surprisingly okay with this."_

"_You aren't?"_

"_I was more worried about how you'd react. I feel like he's still my responsibility and that he's taking advantage of your daughter."_

"_Rory's not that naïve anymore. Fear not, boy of mine. Everything's fine. She's going to see him this weekend and they're getting along really well." Luke sighed._

"_I guess you're probably right."_

_I ain't sorry baby, don't think that_

_We ain't done anything that I take back_

_Go on pretend, that you ain't changed_

_And don't worry 'bout me baby_

_See you when I get there_

"All right, I'll have my phone all weekend so call me if something happens. I'll be back probably late Sunday night. I left Jess's number on the fridge," Rory rattled off as she moved towards the door with her suitcase in hand and her purse hung on her shoulder, keys dangling from her fingers.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah I got it," Paris said, shooing her towards the door. "I know where the emergency fire escape is too, so don't bother telling me that again." She paused and Rory glanced around nervously, sure she was forgetting something. "Have fun. Don't call," she said as she walked back into the apartment. Rory smiled at her and walked out the door, took the stairs down, and went to her car.

It was a little after noon and Rory put in her CD, punched up the volume and started the drive while doing a mental inventory of all the things she could have forgotten. Assured that she was ready, she put the pedal down when she got on the highway and began to feel the anticipation build with every passing mile marker.

_I need your love much more than I want it_

_You left me here with another bad habit_

_And you find paradise and crawled to the shoreline_

_I saw a white flash and then I saw the lids of my eyes_

"All right, she's going to be here soon. I'm running out to the store quick, what do we need?" Jess asked as he put on his jacket and rested his hand on the doorknob. Nick peaked his head out of the kitchen and looked at him.

"Coffee, beer, maybe some food," he said, shrugging.

"I'll be back in a minute," Jess said as he locked the door behind him and jogged down the stairs.

The afternoon had made him stir-crazy. He walked into the corner store and grabbed all the things he wanted, picked up a fresh pack of cigarettes, and glanced at the bookstore as he walked by. In an hour the open house would begin and he tried to preoccupy himself with all that would be going on instead of how he'd function when she arrived.

"Hey!" Chris said, poking his head out the door. Jess directed his eyes in his business partner's direction.

"What's going on? How's everything coming together in there?"

"It's all right but can you come in quick and help me decide if we should leave this painting up where it is? I'm not sure about it," he said, opening the door further. Jess glanced between Chris and the apartment building down the block, unsure.

"Yeah man, no problem," he said, walking back in and promising himself that he wouldn't be busy for long.

_I ain't sorry baby don't think that_

_We ain't done anything that I take back_

_Go on pretend that you ain't changed_

_And don't worry 'bout me baby_

_See you when I get there_

_Don't worry 'bout me baby_

_See you when I get there_

Rory parked her car in the visitor's lot and took her bag out of the trunk, glancing down again at the address she had held in her hand the whole drive there. Making sure one last time that she had it right, she took the stairs up to his floor and knocked on the door.

"Did you forget your fucking key _again_?" Nick said, blindly swinging open the door.

"Hi," Rory said, surprised to see the man in front of her. "I'm Rory," she said, reaching out her hand and smiling at the messy haired roommate she had heard so much about in the last week.

Nick appraised her harshly, determined to find a fault in the woman who had plagued Jess's mind for so long. Grudgingly he shook her hand and opened the door wider for her to enter.

"Nick. Nice to meet you. Jess ran out to the store a little while ago, he should be back any minute. Make yourself comfortable."

"Thanks," she said, dragging the back in behind her and appraising the room, a boiling sensation in the pit of her stomach as she sat on the couch and perused the bookshelves from a distance.

**A/N—Kind of an abrupt ending, but this is getting really long so I'm going to wait until the next chapter to show you the rest of the deliciously dirty Lit!Sex weekend ). Your kindness will be rewarded.**


	13. Nine in the Afternoon

Story Title: Falling Away With You

**Story Title: **Falling Away With You

**Chapter Title: **Nine in the Afternoon (Okay, it's way more contemporary than I usually go for, but I love Panic at the Disco and this song rocks)

**Summary: **"I think I forgot to tell you in high school how cute you look from behind," he said, his voice hoarse and just above a whisper, smelling slightly of beer and an inevitable smoke break.

**Notes: **This took WAY TOO LONG, but I think it turned out the way I wanted it to finally. **The rating matters, yet again.** Thank you to all of my reviewers! You guys absolutely mean the WORLD to me. On with the fic…

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gilmore Girls or the rights to use these characters. I'm just borrowing and I'll put them back where I found them when I'm finished.

"You don't like me very much, do you?" Rory asked as Nick walked back into the room, straightening the collar of his white dress shirt with one hand and running the other through his fluffy tufts of light brown hair.

In the last few years, Rory had become, for lack of a better word, bold. She had acquired the Ivy League resilience of character and all the cunning of a cougar. She was not afraid to ask the hard questions, particularly not of someone who she didn't know yet.

"Uh," Nick stuttered, trying to avoid making eye contact with her. "Why do you say that?" He went back into the kitchen and Rory turned in her to seat to make sure that he wasn't running away from her.

She shrugged. "I just kind of get the feeling that you don't exactly approve of Jess and I seeing each other." Nick stilled and put the cap back onto the bottled water he had been drinking from when he reentered the room. He sighed, deflating like a balloon when he realized she wasn't going to let the issue go anytime soon and dropped into one of their weathered arm chairs.

"I've known Jess for one, almost two years," Nick started out, speaking slowly. "I'm the first to admit that not only does he not tell me everything, but that we probably aren't best friends. We have a symbiotic relationship at best." Nick took a breath while Rory appraised him, not giving anything away in her face. He moved his elbows onto his knees and leaned toward her.

"Since I've known him, he hasn't been quite right. I had gotten to the point where it didn't faze me anymore. Then a couple of weeks ago he came back from promoting the book and something was noticeably different. He wouldn't tell me anything, but something was different. Jess was hopeful. Genuinely hopeful.

"Then he got sad." Nick leaned back in his seat. "I finally got him to tell me who you were, why you meant so much to him, why you still would. And I could tell that at one point in his life, he had honest to God had his heart broken. Jess Mariano. Heartbroken. It didn't make sense." Nick's face got a little redder as he prepared to make his final point.

"This is the happiest I've seen him since I met him two years ago," he hissed. "And I don't know what he was like right after you two split up the first time, but if it still lingered well into his twenties, then something went seriously wrong. I am not going to see him like that again. If you don't plan on sticking around, then leave now, before he gets here," Nick finished, leaning far back in his chair and looking at Rory with stony hazel eyes.

Rory Gilmore had effectively stopped breathing.

"Jess never told you why it didn't work out in high school, did he?" Rory asked, now feeling timid. Nick's gaze didn't drop.

"I had a feeling you left him." Rory shook her head, smiling wryly at him and thought for a moment.

"It's not my story to tell." She paused and looked at her hands, biting back the tears she felt brewing when she briefly recalled that morning on the bus.

She swore she didn't see his bag. She truly thought he was just taking the bus somewhere.

"I've been waiting for us to both come around for a long time, and I don't plan on letting him go twice." She paused, looking him in the eye. "You have my word."

_Back to the street where we began_

_Feeling as good as lovers can, you know_

_Now we're feeling so good_

"A little help!" Jess demanded as he juggled the bags outside of his apartment door.

Nick had since returned to his bedroom, mulling over what Rory had told him, though sizably less upset than he had been when she arrived.

It wasn't completely outside of Nick's nature to become protective. Though he and Jess had lived together for less than two years, and as he had said, weren't exactly friends, they understood one another better than most. And Nick recognized before anyone else that he had been stilted by a girl.

Nick never would have guessed that it had happened three years ago. A week or two, sure. Maybe a few months. Never a year.

And now Nick was determined not to live with depressed, lonely, and hostile Jess ever again.

Therein laid his problem with Rory Gilmore.

"Nick! C'mon! I have to get ready and Rory's gonna be here any minute!"

Before the last word had escaped his lips entirely, Rory swung open the door and was smiling at him brightly.

"Hey!" she said before she pulled him into the room by his collar and pressed her lips against his anxiously. Jess put the bags he had in his hands gently on the floor and put his arms around her waist, pressing their bodies together completely, warm tingles filling him.

Rory ran her tongue along his bottom lip, coaxing his mouth open forcefully. Their tongues danced together for a few minutes as their hands wandered. Finally he pulled away.

"Hey," he said, smiling at her dilated eyes and pink lips. "You're early." She blinked a few times, smiling in return as she slid her hands into his back pockets.

"You're late." He pulled her closer.

"Chris made me stop by the bookstore to help him move this _hideous_ painting. I would've been back a half an hour ago."

"Excuses, excuses," she joked as he pushed some hair away from her face. He rolled his eyes.

"I assume you met Nick," he said, checking her face for signs of having been bitched at. She nodded.

"Yup. He and I talked. Everything's going to be fine," she assured him. Jess kissed her forehead and released his hold on her, picking up the bags again.

"Good," he said, walking the bags into the kitchen, Rory trailing closely behind him. She peered inside the paper bag, her hands behind her back, feigning innocence as he began to put things away.

"What did you get me?" she sing-songed.

Jess smiled knowingly as he continued to put things away. "I'll show you later."

_Picking up things we shouldn't read_

_Looks like the end of history as we know_

_It's just the end of the world_

Rory marveled at the paperback in her hands.

"It's heavy," she said excitedly as she let the pages flip past her fingers, caressing the cover gently. Jess smiled at her as he locked the door to his bedroom and stripped off his t shirt.

"It's three years in the making. And be nice to that copy. I'm not supposed to show it around too much," he said as he opened his closet and dug around for another shirt.

She let herself fall onto his bed while she admired the text in her hands, her fingertips dancing over the raised, silver print of his name along the bottom of the front cover. Rory traced the letters like she was reading Braille, admiring the feel of paper in her hands. She flipped over the book to read the back cover.

"Summary's kind of short," she noted, smiling at him. He grinned into his closet as he pulled out a t shirt and slid it over his head, turning back to her.

"Well I wouldn't want to give too much away now would I Ms. Gilmore?" he asked teasingly as he pulled her up so she was standing and flush with his chest. Her breath swiftly exited her lungs as his arms snaked around her waist, rubbing lazy circles, her hands and his book trapped between them. She smiled sinisterly.

"I don't know about all of that," she said, playing with the hem of the shirt absently as their eyes met again. He groaned outwardly towards the ceiling as she traced his navel and the valley between abdominal muscles lightly and laughed softly.

"Can you hold that thought for four hours while we go to this open house?" he asked, voice tight with restraint. She removed her hand from his stomach and took a step back, grinning with her victory.

"No problem," she purred while she flipped her long, chestnut hair behind her back and turned to his desk where she replaced the book he had shown her, marveling at the cover.

Luna by Jess Mariano.

Jess clenched his hands at his side as he willed himself back into control over his body, shaking his head at her easy movement.

"Such a mean girl," he said, coming up behind her and pressing kisses on her exposed, alabaster neck, his hands palming the points of her hipbones. She chuckled lightly in response.

"We're going to be late," she sang, the last word containing unnecessary and lustily spoken extra syllables. Jess growled against her slender neck, the vibrations shooting down her spine, laying to rest in her tailbone.

"Ugh," he groaned, his hands roaming absently. Rory began to weaken and supported herself against the ladder back of his desk chair, her breathing heavy, air thickening. "This is gonna be like four hours of foreplay. Are you up for a potential closet romp?" Rory playfully slapped on of his hands and made a disapproving noise.

"Dirty boy" she declared, turning her head to kiss him, her hands framing his angular face.

"Chris is going to kill me," Jess spoke between kisses. Rory took a step away from him upon placing one final kiss on the end of his nose, assessing the damage she had done. His eyes were dilated to the size of dimes, lined with mahogany, his chest gently heaving underneath the army green t shirt he was wearing.

"You keep doing that and you're going to have to deliver." He stepped closer. "And I mean soon." Rory smiled.

"Oh I intend to."

_Back to the street where we began_

_Feeling as good as love, you could, you can_

Nick Baylor stepped into Truncheon twenty minutes early for the open house with his portfolio tucked under his arm and a cup of coffee in his hands.

"Thanks for getting the door," he yelled at the back of Matt and Chris as they stood around the refreshment table, speaking under their breath.

"Christ," Matt said, turning around, a bemused smile gracing his face. "Nick's early!"

"Where's Jess?" Chris wondered. Nick set down his things and took one last, long gulp from his cup before tossing it into the nearest trash can.

"In the apartment with his girlfriend," he said, not looking at either of them.

"What?" they demanded in unison. Nick smiled wryly, nodding his head to the side as if to confirm that he was indeed telling the truth. A momentary silence passed between them. "Since when?" Matt wondered.

"Since last weekend. They dated when he went to high school in Connecticut and reconnected over the weekend. She's staying with us so she could come to the open house and stuff."

Chris tried not to let his laugh lace with his words. "You sound pretty happy about it." Nick shot him a look.

"Well did anyone plan on telling me?" Matt demanded, his hands on his hips and his tone slightly shrill. Chris and Nick both looked at him blankly. "Are you saying that it's none of my business?"

"Yeah," Nick explained, a small smile creeping into his face.

On cue the door opened and Jess walked in with Rory, a foot behind him, their hands laced together tightly, blurred at the edges, a mass of fingers wound fixed.

Rory kept her eyes tight to the floor as they walked in, not eager to be assumptive in a territory where she held absolutely no claims. Not even on the man whose hand she was currently clenching so fervently.

"Hey," Jess said as he walked in. Matt and Chris straightened up at the sight of her in her overpriced jeans and tailored jacket. She looked up a little and snuggled closer to Jess as they stopped at the refreshments table, gazing around at the shelves and shelves of books and magazines. A small smile appeared on her lips.

The others responded in unison and Matt stared at Jess, straight faced, willing him to introduce Rory.

"This is Rory," he said, looking straight back at Matt and shaking his head a little at the childlike grin that spread across his face when Jess conceded. "Rory, this is Matt. He's weird, ignore him. And this is Chris," he introduced.

She snapped her attention back to the men at the table and smiled at them, shaking their hands graciously. "Nice to meet both of you," she beamed.

"I'm the reason he was late. Sorry. The painting was however, just that hideous," Chris added as he took her hand. Rory laughed quietly.

"That just might be a priceless work of art that you keep calling hideous," Matt interjected. Chris and Jess rolled their eyes in unison while Nick stood quiet, his hands in his pockets, studying Rory's responses. She laughed to herself again.

"Well, little do you know we only moved that priceless piece of shit in the hopes that one of us might accidentally kick a hole through it and then have to put it back into the storage room," Jess said, his melodic laugh lacing his words.

"Too bad about that wood backing against the canvas, huh?" Chris jibed back.

Nick and Rory shared a laugh.

_Into a place where thoughts can bloom_

_Into a room where it's nine in the afternoon_

_And we know that it could be_

_And we know that it should_

_And you know that you feel it too_

Truncheon was packed, buzzing fully with activity, even as the open house began to wind down. Rory had spent the evening milling around and thumbing through some of the books and copies of their magazine. She spent part of it with Luke, making a mockery of the poetry reading and quietly resolving not to address that Rory would not be following Luke home to Stars Hollow.

She was dangling a beer bottle from one hand and lopsidedly smiling at the book reading occurring in a far off corner when Jess snuck up behind her, his arms snaking around her wisp of a waist while he pushed aside her long hair with his chin so he could freely speak against the impossible softness of her neck and the fragile curve of her ear.

"I think I forgot to tell you in high school how cute you look from behind," he said, his voice hoarse and just above a whisper, smelling slightly of beer and an inevitable smoke break. She tried not to laugh too loudly at him and interrupt the reading. She wiggled her rear end playfully a little against him and felt his laugh vibrate, his chest flush to her back.

"Please say this is almost over," she whispered out of the side of her mouth. Jess nestled a little further into her neck. She sighed at his touch.

"Anxious much?" he asked, growling while his lips brushed against her pulse point. She squirmed under his touch and ran her slender hand against his strong and firmly set arm.

"I'm boiling over," she confessed, headiness in her tone. Jess pressed one last kiss against her neck and slowly released her body from his hold.

"I'm gonna tell the guys that we're leaving and they can close it up," he said as he parted. Rory turned around and followed after him, setting her beer bottle back on the table.

"I don't want you to have to leave early," she spoke apologetically. He turned around when he got to the stairs and looked at her through heavy eyelashes.

"It's supposed to end in fifteen minutes anyway. I'm going to tell Nick that he might want to stay here tonight," Jess said as he began his quick ascent. Rory followed after him, flushing a nervous shade of pink.

"Jess! I don't want him to feel unwelcome in his own apartment!"

"He'd feel more unwelcome if he could hear you and the headboard against our shared wall than if he stays on Matt and Chris's couch, trust me."

'_Cause it's nine in the afternoon_

_And your eyes are the size of the moon_

_You could 'cause you can so you do_

_We're feeling so good_

_Just the way that we do_

_When it's nine in the afternoon_

_Your eyes are the size of the moon_

_You could 'cause you can so you do_

_We're feeling so good_

"I really wish I hadn't locked this door," Jess mumbled breathily against Rory's lips as he fumbled helplessly with the key in his hands while Rory ran her fingernails across the back of his neck, her lips moving for his Adam's apple.

Relief washed over him as the he heard the deadbolt slide back and threw his body into the door as he twisted the knob with his wrist. Whipping Rory in quickly, he backed her against the door and made sure there were no spaces between their bodies as he slid the lock back into place and flicked the living room lights on.

"Finally," she exhaled as Jess deftly undid the button holding her jacket onto her tiny frame and slid it off of her shoulders. She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. He stilled his hands.

"What?" he asked, sounding stressed, panicky, and near combustion.

"So now you're good with your hands?" she asked, curling her fingers into the soft, threadbare fabric of his t-shirt, a devilish smirk spreading across her face as she turned them around and began her backwards journey to his bedroom.

"Are you making fun of me?" he asked, smiling incredulous as she slowly crept towards his door, leisurely unbuttoning her shirt with long, languid motions, eyes hooded. Jess's eyes dilated and turned coal black as more and more of the smooth, flat expanse of her stomach was bared until the shirt too slid liquid across her shoulders, her back, pooling on the floor now between them.

"No," she assured him, shaking her head slowly and letting her now loose hair fall in soft curls around her face. She reached out her hand for his and slowly turned the knob on his bedroom door. "Just showing you how it's done."

_Back to the street_

_Down to our feet_

_Losing the feeling of feeling unique_

_Do you know what I mean?_

As Rory's hands dropped to the button of her jeans, Jess moved forward, determined to take charge, and she stepped back and shook her head. "You're a bad listener," she nearly whispered, her mouth teasing at a grin as she slid the button through the loop and moved for the fly. "I'm showing you how it's done. That means look, don't touch."

Letting her jeans rest loosely and undone upon the apex of her hips, Rory ran her fingers through her hair again, combing out the last trace of tame. She took a deep breath that caused her breasts to swell slightly over the cups of her simple purple lace bra, her skin smooth porcelain, unmarred except by freckles, and Jess doesn't think of them as flaws. They're his roadmaps; how he remembers the spots on her chest that make her whole body shiver when he kisses them. They're what remind him of her when he's alone at night and can only bring up her face. They are landmarks, mile markers, and street signs.

"Rory," he rumbled deep in his larynx. "You're killing me." She gave him another smile as she shimmied the rest of the way out of her jeans and kicked them at him, backing fully into his room.

Jess followed after her, tossing his jacket onto the couch behind him and flicking on a dim lamp on his desk.

Her china doll body was bathed in soft yellow light, creamy and smooth, her body aglow with the kind of light that pools between hipbones and weeps its way into your veins. Her stance was different than it had been in Luke's apartment. Before she was urgent; filled to the brim with years of foreplay leading up to the one explosive moment she had dreamt of since high school. This was adult Rory, playing a game she knew better than he had anticipated.

Jess knew the game too.

_Back to the place_

_Where we used to say_

_Man it feels good to feel this way_

_Do you know what I mean?_

He stepped closer to her, despite her remarks to the contrary. Without even brushing her overheated skin, Jess wordlessly removed his t shirt and let it fall to the floor with a soft crumbling sound, his eyes dark and fixed on hers.

Rory vaguely wondered if he knew that she could already feel his hands on her; the way he was imagining it just then. If he knew she could feel the slow creep up her sides, to kiss aside her bra straps and finally deftly unhook them. She knew he would make an off the cuff statement about being good with his hands. She wondered if he knew that she had bought the purple lingerie, remembering vaguely how it looked against her skin; how the blue had made her look weak, even pale.

All resolve he had pent up over their week apart failing him miserably, Jess ran a shaky hand through her soft, auburn curls and pulled her head up to meet his lips, his other hand dancing lightly down her spine to the dimples just above the waistband of her lace panties.

She tugged gently on what little hair she could grip, massaging his neck with her free hand, sucking on his lower lip when they slid together just right. Jess moaned into her mouth and she smiled.

Jess pulled back abruptly when Rory's hands started a slow and silky downward slide to his jeans, trying to fiddle unnoticed with the belt buckle.

"Rory Gilmore," Jess said, taking her by the waist and sitting her down on the edge of his bed, standing over her. "I believe what we have here is a power struggle." She looked up at him with her lower lip worried between her teeth as she watched him undo his own belt deftly and throw it across the room, the metal buckle skidding against the wood floor.

Her mind flitted back fleetingly to a thought she had of him back when the specifics of sex were lost on her, everything gauzy and pleasant and electric. One of the ways she envisioned him, all sinew and sex and olive complexion eased along by the summer sun.

_Back to the street, back to the place_

_Back to the room where it all began_

_Back to the room where it all began_

Body humming as she sat perched on the edge of his bed, she reached her hands up and kissed the last band of skin between his navel and where his boxers met his hips, his jeans just an inch or so below that point, and brought her small, pale hands to the button, dexterously undoing it and dragging the zipper down. He swallowed hard at the feel of the metal unzipping against him, never breaking their eyes as the air thickened like custard around them, gelling cold against their skin.

Maneuvering her body lengthwise and prostrate against his sheets, Jess positioned himself above her, slowly letting his weight ease down onto her without fully letting the friction ease the ache between her thighs, the throbbing more demanding with every swipe of his calloused and gentle hands, thrumming up and down her body painfully slow.

"Jess," she moaned quietly, breathily as his index finger ran along the powder soft silk of the space where her panties met her thighs. He looked back up at her just as her hands ran through her hair again, her head tilted back against the pillows, body arched as a testament to the tension building low in her belly.

"Tell me what you want me to do," he breathed against the inside of her thigh, hot breath like flames licking the underside of her legs. She whimpered. "Tell me what you used to imagine." He paused. "Before everything changed." She allowed herself a moment to regain normal breathing before she began to speak, husky and low.

"Off white sheets. Never candles, never lotion. The windows were always open, but I also always imagined it in the summer. You smelled like must and sex and fresh cut grass." She slowly sat up as he continued to blow hot ribbons of air onto her crepe paper thin flesh. She reached her finger out to his lips and traced them gently before he pulled himself up and covered hers with his. The kiss was hot and slow, like the delicious burn of lust and want and coveting. Rory disconnected their lips as her hands slipped below the waistband of his boxers and began to stroke him slowly, lightly, her voice a hot little whisper against his neck. "You liked to change positions." She bit his earlobe, slowly applying more pressure with her teeth in sync with the stroke of her hand against his shaft.

"Tell me what you want me to do to you, Rory," he growled, his eyes fluttering closed. She smiled against his neck, feeling his body respond noticeably at her touch and pressed an open mouth kissed against the place where his pulse pounded against his skin.

"I want you to do it all. Everything. Anything," she said as she slowly closed her hand around him and gave a gentle squeeze, feeling him harden and thicken in her palm. She paused while he groaned against her shoulder again, biting down on it gently. "I can go into specifics if you want."

She was not at all surprised at the effect her words had on him. Tossing them together both back onto the mattress, he pressed himself even tighter against her, hips first, watching her pink face sink deep into his plush pillow and her eyes widen at the feeling of delicious, unexplainable and impossible to escape pressure. He moved clockwise against her center, alternating pressure and speed every few seconds. Rory cried out sharply after a few moments, feeling herself soak completely.

"Am I on the right track so far?" he asked, breathy against her ear.

"Yes, oh God…Jess," she uttered, sounding drugged as he slid his hands under the cups of her bra, massaging and molding, rolling the tips between his fingers. Frustrated with the interference of the offensive lace, he removed one hand and reached behind her, freeing her body of the garment and flinging it to the floor. He laved each one with his mouth thoroughly, his hands dancing in the hollows beside her hipbones, insinuating his next move gracelessly and pulling her panties off completely.

Lifting his hips away from hers and taking great satisfaction in the frustrated sigh that fell from her lips, he began to kiss his way down her body, lighting fires in her veins that made all of her nerve endings ignite and spread like a forest fire just beneath her skin. She squirmed restlessly under his touch, knowing where his hands dancing up the insides of her thighs and his tongue currently teasing the rim of her navel were going to meet.

Jess stilled momentarily and watched her movements from his vantage point between her legs as she lifted her hips off the mattress, back arching, seeking some form of friction. Finally, he obliged, by sliding one of his long, tapered fingers inside of her and feeling the way her body jumped at the feeling, sighing contentedly.

"Oh thank god," she breathed. Jess smiled coyly to himself. Slowly, he pumped the finger in and out before running a pointed tongue through her once and then kissing back up her body as she moaned his name a couple of times, moving against his hand as he inserted another finger.

"Shh," he said, pressing his free hand to her lips before kissing her softly, coaxing her body temperature to steadily rise. As he felt her chest heaving heavily underneath him, he removed his hand and spread her legs a little further apart, readying her for what he was about to do to her.

"Now," she demanded, resorting to the monosyllabic in defeat to his touch. She propped herself on her elbows and helped him pull his boxers the rest of the way down as he reached past her head to the nightstand for a condom. Hands slightly trembling, he slid it onto himself and poised himself at her entrance, teasing her more.

'_Cause it's nine in the afternoon_

_Your eyes are the size of the moon_

_You could 'cause you can so you do_

_We're feeling so good_

_Just the way that we do_

_When it's nine in the afternoon_

Slowly, he pushed into her and his head fell forward at the feeling of her muscles responding readily to his presence. He pumped her slowly, hitting deeper the next time, causing her hand to clutch frantically at the pillow her head as propped against. Her legs instinctively wrapped around his lower back, coaxing his movements to quicken.

Remembering what she had said earlier, he rolled them over quickly, letting her ride him and control the angle. She adjusted herself for a moment, making small figure eights with her hips that made Jess grind his teeth together and growl his praises. Putting both of her small hands on his chest, she lifted herself up and quickly fell back down onto him, repeating the movement several times before they both began to shake and moan with each movement. Sensing she was close and that he would not be able to hold on much longer, he reached between them and rubbed her in small circles. Her head crashed backwards, hair tickling her naked back as her climax took her over, repeating his name over and over like a bedroom benediction. Jess finally let himself go, groaning deeply as they used their last reserves of energy to move together, prolonging the feeling for as long as possible.

Fatigued, she dropped her body slowly, curling up beside him in bed as they both regulated their heart rates, enjoying their slight post-orgasmic chill. She kissed his neck, moving up to the shell of his ear and rested her hand against his pectoral muscle, enjoying the way her fingers looked, spanned across his chest. He smiled at the touch.

"Thank you," she breathed contentedly.

"Anytime," he mumbled against her lips before they both took to the kiss, smiling into it.

"I guess I should rethink that whole thing about being good with your hands, huh?" she said shyly, her cheeks flushing a delicate shade of pink as she pulled one of the sheets up around her waist, draping over the curve of her hip.

He thought that she looked like a statue Greek goddess, curled up beside him, stone buffed smooth and warm, pale and unmarred. Classic.

Jess laughed from deep within his chest at her comments and pulled her closer, his hand slipping beneath the cover and drawing lazy designs against her back. "I guess so."

Jess heard Rory's stomach grumble loudly against his own and gave her a small grin, caressing the flatness and easing it to quiet. She laughed quietly.

"I didn't eat before I came. I was too nervous," she confessed. He dropped his jaw dramatically and she gently shoved him with her hand against his chest.

"Are you tired?" he asked, formulating a plan, hoping she would approve. She shook her head vigorously.

"All better now," she said, sitting up slightly, not aware of her exposed chest in the yellow light.

"Then I've got an idea."

**A/N – I'm sorry, I know this took an OBNOXIOUSLY long time for me to write and post, but I literally have spent time on it every day since I posted Chapter 12 trying to get it just right. The end feels a little incomplete to me, but this was already crazy long for me. As usual, reviews are like Milo; you just can't get enough!**

**Expect Chapter 14 fairly soon. I need to start getting the plot back on track, but I wanted to get one good Lit!Sex! in prior to that!**


	14. Stuttering

Story Title: Falling Away With You

**Story Title**: Falling Away With You

**Chapter Title:** Stuttering (Ben's Brother…yeah, from that Dentyne Ice Commercial, but I love it anyway)

**Summary:**"We're not _exactly_ like Sandy and Danny." Rory wrinkled her nose.

"How's that? You have the dark hair, fast cars, bad ass, leather jacket, smoking in the boys room thing going. And I'm all angelic and smart and pure and naïve. I mean, I guess our names don't have that same, cool rhyme scheme going, but if you let me call you Jessie, we could at least come close," she explained.

**Notes: **My sincerest and biggest thanks to Meredith-Grey, Curley-Q, pam halliwell, lillitgirlx2, CherryWolf713, Everyone Is A Hero, xLivexItxUpx, and udontknowmebutiknowme for their awesome words of encouragement that helped me plow through this chapter! It's kind of light and fluffy, but I tried to get back to the bigger issues presented in the early chapters, and the next few will be dealing with them more directly. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Gilmore Girls in any way or the rights to use the characters. I'm only borrowing them and will replace them when I'm done.

"Do you have a sewing kit?" Rory asked Jess as she walked back into his bedroom as he threaded his belt through his belt loops, her shirt hanging off of her shoulders, still partially unbuttoned.

"Yeah, I keep it in the same basket that I keep my knitting in. Let me get that for you," he said, his face completely straight. She glared at him for a beat before sighing and looking down at a thread hanging from her shirt, flipping an iridescent purple button between her free fingers.

"One of my buttons fell off. It's kind of an important one," she said, gesturing toward the string which dangled from the very middle of the row. Jess gave her a lopsided grin and went to his desk, searching through the drawer.

"I might have a needle around here somewhere," he mumbled as she heard paper and pens shuffle against the wood. Rory looked around the room some more while he searched.

"If I see yarn anywhere in this apartment, you know that I'm going to have to hold it against you for the rest of your life, right?" she quipped as he turned around, needle in hand.

"You know, if you hadn't been quite so eager to get me into bed, you might not need this needle at all," he said, holding it just out of her reach. Rory pouted for a moment, her hair tousled despite having been brushed.

"Jess!" she whined. "I'm hungry and I can't go into public like this!" He laughed at her and she narrowed her eyes at him.

"Why don't you just put another shirt on?"

"Because then people will know that we came up here just to have sex!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms to her side and smiling slightly. Jess laughed at her.

"I can pretty much guarantee you that everyone already knew that. And what makes you think we're going to run into anybody from the open house?" he asked, shrugging, his hands hanging at his side, needle clenched between his fingers.

Rory narrowed her eyes again and pointed at him, her index finger a mere inch from the bridge of his nose. He grinned and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Because I know you," she said, her voice playful but threatening. "And I know that you're getting a kick out of this," she said, her face quivering as she tried to hold back her laughter at the inquisitive look on his face and burst into hysterics.

"Oh yeah?" he asked, tugging her closer to him by the closed part of her shirt, his eyes softening. She dropped her hand away from his face and rested it delicately against his bare chest.

"Yeah," she breathed as he kissed her softly, passing the needle into her hand gently, careful not to prick her with it.

"Thanks," she said, shyly looking up at him through her eyelashes. "Thread?"

"Dental floss," Jess said, lowering his eyebrows at her, "is the closest we have to thread. But it works."

_It's been it's been it's been it's been_

_Su-su-su-such a long time long time long time_

_Since anybody's touched me touched me touched me_

_The way that you touch me_

"I have the distinct feeling that due to the utterly undeniably close proximity to Truncheon, that this establishment is going to be _filled_ with people from the open house. Namely your business partners." She paused as she gave him a look that he returned playfully. "My hair is a mess and one of my shirt buttons is sewed on with mint flavored dental floss."

"But Mike's has _food_," he explained, drawing out the last word and squeezing her hip. She rolled her eyes. "And I'm sorry about the flavored dental floss. We like to keep fresh breath, Nick and I," he quipped as he located a table in a corner of the bar and began walking them over to it.

"Hostess?" she said, turning her head back to the woman leading another couple to a table near the middle.

"Just a formality," he said as they settled into their booths. Rory scanned the bar nervously, looking for any of Jess's friends that may recognize her. She sighed and sank into the booth, opening her menu and laying it in front of her as she searched it over thoughtfully.

"I feel like we're in the movie _Grease_," she said as he snapped the plastic menu shut and reached in his pockets for his cigarettes.

"'Scuse me?" he asked, moving to light it. Rory smiled to herself briefly.

"Like, I'm Sandy, you're Danny, and we're hanging out at that diner. And Danny's trying to hide Sandy from his friends because she's bad for his reputation, but they find them anyway and Rizzo and Kineckie get into a huge fight. Oh! And then Frenchie's guardian angel sings to her about hairdressing and hookers or something. I don't know, I never listened that close." She paused as he grinned at her, shaking his head slightly. "And have you ever noticed that the girls dancing with the silver rollers and stuff are the other Pink Ladies? I mean, how cheap do you have to be not to hire the extras to do one more scene?"

He remembered distinctly missing the way she rambled. The way random bits of oddly factual information would trickle into the current of her words. The way that sometimes the conclusions she came up with could hit you like tidal waves.

"I cannot say I have ever watched that scene that closely," he said, looking her in the eye. "But you are wrong about one thing."

"What's that?" she asked.

"We're not _exactly_ like Sandy and Danny." Rory wrinkled her nose.

"How's that? You have the dark hair, fast cars, bad ass, leather jacket, smoking in the boys room thing going. And I'm all angelic and smart and pure and naïve. I mean, I guess our names don't have that same, cool rhyme scheme going, but if you let me call you Jessie, we could at least come close," she explained. Jess laughed at her as he exhaled the smoke in an upward stream.

"Okay, now we're not like Danny and Sandy for _two_ reasons."

"Well if you're such and expert, do tell."

"First of all, I don't know about angelic and pure. Certainly not naïve. Need I remind you of the slightly pink spot on my neck due to somebody's impatient mouth?" he said, gesturing to his neck. She flushed a deep shade of pink and crossed her arms over her chest, biting her lip as light danced through her eyes, heat building inside of her again at the thought.

"Point taken," she said, her voice deeper than before.

"Second," Jess said, moving closer to her and dropping his voice down. "I brought you here because you're _good_ for my reputation, not bad." He paused while her features softened at his confession. "I'm showing you off," he whispered out of the side of his mouth. Rory smiled at him sheepishly. Jess nodded toward the bar where a young mulatto girl with short hair and funky style was joking with a client. "The waitress, Giovanna, we call her Gio for short, is a good friend of mine. And I spotted Nick, Matt and Chris on the other side of the bar. I have no doubt that they'll be over here, party crashing within about ten minutes." He paused again while she gave him a full smile. "Unless that makes you uncomfortable, in which case we can eat leftover Chinese food on my lumpy couch from 1978."

"The Chinese food or the couch?" Rory asked, leaning forward, arms crossed and resting against the table.

"Probably both." She smiled at him and leaned across the table to ensnare his lips in another kiss, enjoying the bitterness of the cigarette smoke on his lips while she caressed them with her own. It was a small kiss, a lover's excuse to fill an otherwise silent moment. An interlude. Conversational intermission.

_So if I stutter, stutter, stutter_

_Yeah I feel so so so unsexy_

_So maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut_

_At least until you kiss me_

"Jess Mariano, I _know_ you did not come through those doors and not invite us to come and sit with you!" Nick said, smiling sloppily in a drunk way as he and the guys appeared at the table, drinks in hand. Rory turned pink immediately and looked back down at her menu while Jess grinned at her reaction.

"Just like _Grease_," he said to her out of the side of his mouth quickly before turning back to his friends. "I didn't see you in here!"

Rory grinned to herself, feeling her heart soar at the reference he had made. She snapped the menu shut and looked back up, smiling even more brightly.

"Lie!" Nick proclaimed, turning around to inform the other guys. "He's lying!"

"Nick you can either sit down and can it, or you can take my job, since you seem to enjoy wandering around here so much," Gio said, though no one could see her behind the three-deep man wall block her from view. Rory furrowed her brow, trying to figure out who was speaking before she broke through and smiled at both of them.

"Hey hun!" she said, before hugging Jess with one arm and turning her attention to Rory.

"Hey!" Jess responded, enthused at the sight of her. "Gio, this is Rory. She's staying with me this weekend. Rory, this is our very good friend and communal mother figure, Giovanna." Rory laughed good-naturedly at the introduction and reached her hand out, shaking Gio's.

"Please call me Gio. I'm so glad I got to finally meet you! My boys," she said, shoving Nick slightly, "were down here the other night and they mentioned that there was a lady staying with them this weekend. Which trust me, is way more unusual than natural for two bachelors." The girls laughed for a minute and Nick and Jess shared a look, deciding whether or not the comment was biting enough to warrant a response.

"Are we going to get chewed out if we bring chairs over here?" Chris asked, flashing his deep kind eyes at Gio as she turned from Rory. She studied him for a moment.

"I doubt I could stop you anyway," she said, turning back to Rory and Jess. "What can I get for the two of you?" Each put in their drink and food orders while the rest of the boys pulled up chairs noisily.

"All unpacked?" Nick cheekily asked Rory, turning to her with a lopsided smile. Rory choked slightly on the beer that she had ordered.

"Pardon?"

"Well, you guys went upstairs to unpack, right?" Jess shook his head, closing his eyes as Nick continued to stare at Rory, awaiting his answer.

"Uhh," she stumbled, blinking uncontrollably, a nervous smile curling up on her lips as she glanced at Jess and he returned the smile, his insinuating a slight naughtiness.

"So, you'll be happy to know that the turnout was excellent," Matt intervened. Relieved, Rory let out a quiet sigh and casually bumped knees with Jess under the table. She noticed a softening of his features as he and Matt discussed the business with Chris. Rory took another long drink from her beer as Gio set her food in front of her and Jess.

Nick watched in amazement as Rory ate at a fierce pace. "Big eater?" Nick laughed as she swallowed the last of her burger. She laughed and wiped her face on her napkin.

"Oh this is nothing," she said as she reached for her beer and finished it off. She looked at Nick quizzically while he kept his eyes on her, seemingly interested. "What happened to all the hostility this morning? Shouldn't there be some residual anger?" she wondered, hoping she could come off as playful if he was offended.

_So kiss me again_

_Cause only only you can stop this st-st-st-stuttering_

_Kiss me again_

_And ease my su-su-su-su-su-su-su-su-su-suffering_

_Woah,_

_Yeyeyeyeyeyea, oh_

"_She's cute," Nick conceded out of the side of his neatly pursed mouth, as he settled into his spot beside Jess at the top of the staircase. Jess nodded. _

"_She always has been." Nick turned to face Jess and was greeted with a grunt._

"_Why did you two break up in high school?" Jess shook his head and scratched the back of his neck. After a moment or two of silence, Nick spoke again. "I asked her; she told me that it wasn't her story to tell. Which I guess means one thing: you left her."_

_Jess could feel the room being vacuumed of all of its air, could hear only the blood pounding through his vessels as Nick stood there and he gripped the banister like maybe, if he held on hard enough, the floor would quit spinning. At a time like this in his life, he never imagined having to explain Rory. Having to describe to anyone his senior year of high school (if you could even call it that), and oversimplify the nuances so delicate._

_He cleared his throat once before he drew in a slow, cold breath and began speaking. "Rory went to this private school for high school in Hartford for both exceptionally gifted and exceptionally unstable/workaholic types. I got sent to live with my uncle in Connecticut because I was getting into too much trouble in New York. Flunking out of school, ditching classes, getting in trouble with the cops, stuff like that. My mom was too busy trying to get her life under control to keep me reigned in." He paused, hoping Nick wouldn't get the impression that he was dancing around the issue._

_"Her mom and my uncle were good friends. They actually live together now, not that that's relevant. But one night, my Uncle Luke took me over to her mom's house for a 'Welcome to Town' dinner," Jess said, all under his breath with a certain inkling of irony and lingering disgust. "I walked past her bedroom door and she turned her head when she heard me coming through. I had never seen someone so pale or perfect or with a voice that sounded more like Sleeping Beauty in all of my life." He paused while he took a drink and leaned backwards against the banisters, taking his eyes away from the milling crowd downstairs. _

_"We were friends accidentally. She wanted desperately not to like me and I was never nice to people who were inherently nice like she is. I hated her floppy haired, Opie-esque boyfriend who had clearly never laid a hand on her, and her mother, while not without her good points and excess of quirks, was pretty much in the same boat. She didn't like me either. I was mean to her boyfriend, not very nice to my uncle or her mother. I had a penchant for vandalizing the town. But in her bookshelf, she had _Pride and Prejudice_ right next to _Howl_, followed closely by _Lonesome Dove_. And she wasn't afraid of me."_

_"So why did you leave her?" Nick asked, his eyes softer now. _

_"We'd been dating for a couple of months, but I had taken on a second job out of town so I could buy a car and take her out. Most of the time I just helped out in the diner, but I didn't get paid much to do that. Turns out I miscalulated and missed so much school that there was no way for me to graduate. I'd have to either attempt to make up the time in summer school or repeat the year. I refused. I hated going to school. My biggest gripe was that I was smarter than most of the people there and it only took me ten minutes to learn what they did in a week. Hence my attendance record. _

_"The catch was that if you didn't graduate, you weren't allowed to go to Prom. Well, Rory went to school out of town, but pretty much all of her friends still lived in Stars Hollow and went to school with me. She wanted desperately to be able to go to the prom in her home town, and she wanted to go with me. The one thing she had ever asked me for directly and sincerely and that I had promised her, I had managed to fuck up._

_"And the rest is pretty much history, with a really shameful interlude where I tried to get her to go to bed with me at a house party and wound up punching out her ex-boyfriend. Next thing I knew, my uncle told me that the jig was up and that if I couldn't graduate and refused to go back to school, I had to leave. I left town on a bus, not realizing it was the one she was taking to school that morning. All I had the nerve to say was that I couldn't take her to prom. Not that I was on my way out of town."_

_"California?" Nick asked, remembering what he had said about his travels. Jess nodded. "You never said why. Any reason? Just distance?"_

_"My dad came back into my life randomly and I decided to chase after him. He left my mom before I ever got a chance to know him. I decided to have a go of it," Jess said moving back over to the card table where they guys had stashed their beer and cracked another. _

_Nick's stomach sunk theatrically into his stomach as his greeting to Rory echoed hollow in his ear. _

_"If that's the end of this story, then something's not adding up," Nick mumbled, trying to riddle everything out. _

_Jess sucked in another breath, hoping that Nick would have been satiated by the rough outlines, not needing the meat of the matter. The questions, and the disappointing declines. _

"_I called her from California, but couldn't get up the nerve to explain anything else. She said she might have loved me. So I, being Idiot-in-Residence, came back to town, and not only begged her to skip town with me and run away and never look back and that I was a changed man, but that I was also in love with her. Then I left because she didn't want to go with me and she didn't love me anymore._

"_Then, not too long ago, I was traveling through the area to promote _The Subsect_, and I decided to stop by her grandparents and say hello. Which more or less brings us here. She broke up with her handbag-toting boyfriend and wants to try."_

"_Do you think you owe it to her?" Nick wondered, hoping his chiding was not without warrant._

"_She deserves better from me than she got the first time around."_

_I know, I know it's so, it's so-so-so-so-so symbolic_

_Of everything_

_Everything that's wrong with me and you, so tell me what I'm supposed to do_

"I asked him what happened." Nick paused to let Rory process and saw the slight widening of her irises, the paralysis of her features. "I'm sorry for how I acted. I was impressed that you didn't tell me the story anyway. Respected him enough to allow him to tell it." Nick was almost sheepish now, the previously ostensible effects of his drinking fading quickly.

Smiling, Rory lifted her new beer bottle and they toasted to a new understanding of each other, drinking and laughing lightly at their quick camaraderie.

"Besides, I kind of like that you're a little bit mean to him."

"Someone has to be sometimes," she said, smiling coyly as she eyed him discreetly. Nick pointed to her blouse and chuckled.

"Dental floss?" he wondered. Rory flushed nearly purple as she shoved Jess playfully.

"You didn't tell me that this is a trick you use frequently!" she exclaimed, thrusting the button in question in his direction. The other men at the table ceased their conversation and looked on, thoroughly amused. Jess grinned at her and she narrowed her eyes before her cheeks were stained a reddish shade of pink, realizing what she had revealed to the rest of the group.

Jess looked to Nick, rolling his eyes skyward and gesturing in airy frustration. "Why do you have to cause trouble?" The playful exasperation was easily waved off as Nick gave a wide, toothy grin akin to an eight year old boy and took another drink.

xxx

"Tell me about where in California we're going," Rory said, her face soft and words supple, made tender by four or five beers and the contentedness of a quaking, Mariano-induced orgasm. Jess laughed as he leaned against the headboard, dragging on his cigarette and crushing the butt against the glass ashtray on his nightstand. Rory sat up further in bed, the sheet falling off of the powdery pliability that was the curve of her right breast, curiosity and interests piqued.

Jess smirked to himself, still not believing his ears. She was really going; the timeframe for impulse completely gone; the word "California" sounding like warm clover honey on her lips.

"All of us guys got a timeshare on the ocean, just south of Santa Cruz." Rory's eyes pressed for more, the sheet falling slightly. He didn't care if it was accidental or not; the message was clear. "My time was coming up soon and they don't use it too often, so I decided to bite the bullet and go out there again." Bending down to brush aside the lock of hair that had strayed, Jess pressed his lips against the point of her shoulder. "Private beach."

She giggled at both the feeling at the emotion. "You don't need to tempt me. But I do have one other question." He responded by placing an open mouth kiss at the nape of her neck. "Do I need to buy a plan ticket?"

Chuckling softly against her velvety skin, he shook his head and took her earlobe between his teeth gently, caressing her neck. "I don't fly. You know better than that." Rory rolled her eyes and pushed the 450 thread count white sheet down to her waist.

"Please don't tell me we're taking the bus," she complained, her words still slurred, throatier because of the downward path his mouth was taking, stopping to graze teasingly over her breasts.

"Driving," he murmured. Rory laughed again.

"I should've known." She took his head in her hands and pulled his face up to hers, meeting his lips in a slow, deep kiss that he felt down in the heart of his knees, spreading heat into the arches of his feet.

_Oh, it's been ages since we've been really honest_

_But I can make cha-cha-cha-changes_

_If you really want this_

Jess awoke slowly on Saturday morning to the smell of dawn and an overnight rain shower being steamed off of the pavement by sunlight. Blinking a few times to clear the cobwebs in his brain, he pulled back and glimpsed at the lithe body beside him, sleeping soundly with her hair rumpled against his pillow.

Though his curtains were drawn against the daylight, the brighter rays had filtered their way in and bathed the room in scrutinizing white light. Rory purred lightly against the soft cotton of his pillow case and tightened the hold she had on his leg with her leg, drawing him closer. Chuckling, Jess pushed some of her auburn hair off of her forehead and strained his neck to see the clock.

"No," Rory said softly, her eyes still shut as she reached for his arm and pulled it back to her, resting it in the curve of her waist. "Don't look at the clock. I don't want to think about going home."

Pressing an innocent kiss against her forehead, Jess settled himself back into the sheets and let his right hand wander at will along her form. Over the last few years Rory had lost the look of underfed and awkward in exchange for feminine curves. Her hips had swollen with age as had her previously boney thighs and calves. Everything about her had softened except her words and her mind.

"You aren't leaving until tomorrow. What are you talking about?" he wondered, pushing aside the sheet again and exposing the fair pinkness of her lower back. She tightened her hold even more on Jess's leg at the sensation of the cool spring air and his warm fingers against her skin.

"It's too soon. Let's just not look at the clock today," she resolved, finally beginning to blink back the sleep that had held her only minutes before. They laid there together for a few minutes, allowing themselves the hidden time in between consciousness and slumber before Rory restlessly began to move beneath the covers, biting her lip worriedly.

"Which is it? Do you want coffee or to know what time it is?" Rory narrowed her eyes at him and he mocked by mirroring the look. "There's a clock on the coffeemaker."

xxx

Luke awoke with a start at the sight of his fiancée staring at him from the rocker in their bedroom, a cup of coffee clutched between her hands.

"Why are you staring at me with that psychotic smile at," Luke paused to look at the alarm clock, "5:10 in the morning?"

"How was the open house?" Lorelai asked evenly, her body language giving nothing away other than the fact that she might be verging on sociopath.

"Seriously?" Luke asked, propping himself up on his elbows and knitting his eyebrows together. "You're up at this hour to ask me about Jess's open house?" She nodded animatedly and got up and sat down on the bed next to him, sipping her coffee and tucking her legs under her so she sat cross legged.

"Tell me _everything_," she specified for dramatic effect. Luke rolled his eyes and leaned back against the headboard, pulling the sheet up with him and rubbing hand across his forehead.

"Well it's a _big_ brick building that says 'Truncheon Books' over the doorway, and I think I counted sixteen, maybe only twelve windows on the whole front, which is weird because Jess and I had that huge argument about windows when we were trying to find bigger apartment and he knew nothing about windows. And on the inside-," he was cut off by Lorelai.

"Enough! You're making me want to eat wood screws! Did you notice anything about Rory and Jess?" she asked, frantic and frazzled. Luke grinned a little just under his skin and to himself at how he had worked her, pushing her buttons with his observance.

"I honestly only saw them together for probably a solid sixty seconds. They seemed happy, but not gross. What more do you want? Rory seemed like she was in a really good mood. She spent most of the night doing her own thing." Lorelai still seemed displeased and downed the rest of her warm, aromatic coffee.

"What about Jess? Did he seem fine? Did he say anything about her staying there?"

"Have you met Jess?"

"She hasn't called! I haven't been given an update since three days before she left, and before that it was only to tell me that they had sex in the apartment!" Lorelai was turning manic on Luke faster than he had seen in a while.

"Calm down," he commanded her and put his hand on her leg, easing her with his touch. Lorelai sighed.

"She's my baby, and she drove a really long way without calling me and probably is doing all of these things without calling me and I can't figure out why!" Luke looked at her for a few seconds, his eyebrows up on his forehead and a slight tilt to his mouth that meant he found something slightly distasteful.

"Have you completely forgotten what Jess and Rory were like in high school? I'm pretty sure if you think back you'll realize that there were distinct amounts of time where you didn't hear from her or about what was going on. They like their privacy," Luke reasoned.

While still appearing amused, Lorelai scrunched up her face in disgust. "Because they're probably having too much sex," she grumbled lightly as she turned in bed and stood up.

"Ah geez, Lorelai!"

_So kiss me again_

'_Cause only you can stop this st-st-st-stuttering_

_Kiss me again_

_And ease my su-su-su-su-su-su-su-su-su-suffering_

_Woah, yeyeyeyeyeyea, oh_

"I can't believe you shanghaied me into cooking," Rory griped as she stood at the kitchen counter, an apron wrapped loosely around the highest curve of her hips as she made a halfheartedly sincere attempt at chopping a carrot.

Jess kissed her temple as he moved past her and dug around in the refrigerator for the cheese she had grated an hour earlier.

"Chopping vegetables for a salad is not cooking."

"Lie!" she exclaimed, the knife in hand. "If I have to do anything other than open the package and consume with maybe a little bit of microwave action included, it's cooking."

"Technically, what you're doing is prep work."

"Don't you use your fancy schmancy vocabulary on me, Jess Mariano. You're gonna owe me big time at the end of this meal." Jess stopped what he was doing and came up behind her, spanning his hands solidly against the expanse of her stomach. Pressing his lips against the back of her ear, he spoke low and deep in his larynx, almost at the same level as a growl.

"I did your favorite thing this afternoon in the shower. I think the least you can do for me is chop this carrot," he mumbled, placing his hand over the one of hers that held the knife and guiding the chop along across the rugged shell of the vegetable.

"Huh," she said, leaning into the embrace and watching as their hands worked together, laughing when he made a renegade chop that left the vegetable deformed.

"Lorelai Gilmore, this is _appalling_ craftsmanship," he joked, his lips still against her ear, speaking softly. Dropping the knife onto the wooden cutting board with a dull thud, Rory turned in his arms as he reached to the small of her back and undid the loose knot that held the apron to her body, giving her an amused smile.

"I guess there's some things I'm just not good at." She reached up to his neck and gently massaged the soft skin there, lacing her fingers into his short, dark, just barely curling hair.

"Why don't you show me the ones that you are then," he suggested, his voice stained with misbehaving.

_Kiss me again_

'_Cause only you can stop the st-st-st-stuttering_

_Kiss me again_

_And ease my su-su-su-su-su-su-su-suffering_

Scrolling down her list of contacts as she fumbled with her keys, Rory was greeted with the sight of Paris Geller waiting attentively at the front door.

"Holy crap!" Rory exclaimed, jumping back and thrown slightly off balance by the weight of the bag she had slung over her shoulder.

"So?" Paris asked, undaunted by Rory's shock. Rory shook her head and moved past her into the apartment, setting her stuff on the floor and looking back to her cell phone.

"It was nice," she said, glossing over details and descriptive words so as not to pique her interest.

"Good. I'm going to get dinner. I ordered enough for about twelve people, so I figure that should be enough for you and I," she said as she slipped on her sweatshirt and stepped into her shoes. Rory smiled at her appreciatively.

"Sounds great."

"Back soon," she called back as she exited the apartment.

Throwing herself onto the dilapidated couch, Rory found Jess's number and waited for the ringing to cease.

"Hey."

"Hi." A moment of silence passed over the line.

"You got back to Yale okay?" he wondered.

"Oh yeah. No traffic to speak of." She paused and took a breath. "I miss you. I know it's stupid because I've been gone for about four hours."

"I've been known to have that effect on women before," he gloated. Nick dropped something in the background and swore loudly.

"Aren't you going to go and see what happened?" Rory asked, laughing.

"If he screams, but I think he's fine."

"Your laissez-faire attitude about Nick might eventually catch up with you."

"Hopefully not yet."

"So you're coming back to Stars Hollow in a few weeks?" she wondered. Jess made an affirmative noise and Rory nodded to herself. "Good." She let herself pause, deciding whether or not she should ask. "Is that the next time I get to see you?"

Chuckling, Jess responded. "I guess that's up to you."

**A/N—Okay, I did my best, so let me know what you think! And I need some ideas for the next chapter because I have to fast-forward to California! And whatever **_**did**_** happen to Logan? Will he reappear? What about Dean's reaction to Jess being in town? Will I be really evil and drag Tristan DuGrey back into the scene? **

**The anticipation mounts )!**


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